Short project summary

Virtually all organisms on our planet exhibit diel rhythms in their physiology and behavior. These rhythms are based on an endogenous molecular pacemaker system, the so-called circadian clock, which enables the organism to anticipate, rather than simply react to, the 24-hour changes in its environment. In our work, we use the well-established model organism Tribolium castaneum (red flour beetle) to study the effects of social cues on the entrainment of these clocks in non-social but group-living organisms.