Biological Rhythms (An Old and Rare Book)

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THIS book is meant to be an introduction to the fascinating phenomena of biological rhythms. It is also designed to serve as a source book' to Indian students in College and University classes. The treatment is deliberately simple but I have attempted to keep the reader posted about recent research advances. The many original figures which describe our own work at the Department of Animal Behaviour are there only to emphasize that such research can be undertaken even in India.

In 1960 when I began research in the Madras University Zoology Research Laboratory and soon after accidentally discovered for myself tidal and circadian rhythms in the swimming and oxygen uptake of a crab the world of biological rhythms was a very different one. No enterprising young researcher would willingly stick his neck out proclaiming that there are biological rhythms! It was a subject of the scientific twilight zone, its outlines barely showing, good for anecdotes but not good enough for full-time and serious scientific study. I am personally glad that I never let go. Today biological rhythm research (chronobiology) is a frontier area biological discipline and has attracted some of the best brains. Chronobiology is a much-respected and fashionable avocation. The physicist, the biochemist, the behavioural biologist, the psychologist, the medical scientist, the molecular biologist and the geneticist have all something in chronobiology for each. It is a multidisciplinary area of research and many problems await a solution. Maybe some of the Indian students reading this primer will provide the solutions to some of the problems.

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has to its credit publications of nearly 900 titles in its Book University Series. These books mainly relate to the fields of culture, education, ethics and spirituality. The publications have been widely well received and the sales exceed eight millions.

Bhavan's main purpose is to provide a modern bridge to span the past, the present and the future. Today science occupies a pre-eminent position in life. For some time we have been considering the bringing out of books on scientific subjects so that knowledge in the field of science is made available to a large number of the lay public and also provide reading material to students in Higher Secondary Schools and Colleges to keep them acquainted with the latest developments in various scientific subjects.

This book by Prof. M.K. Chandrashekaran deals with a fascinating subject, the rhythm in the functioning of Nature, under the title "Biological Rhythms". The writing of these books are funded by a generous grant by the Department of Science and Technology to the Madras Science Foundation. The Madras Science Foundation is actively engaged in bringing out a series of books, one of which is the present one. We hope and trust this book will serve the purpose we have in view and will be well received, particularly by the students community.

WE live in an extremely rhythmic environment. The environ- mental changes in light, temperature, humidity and other factors for example show a daily or 24-hour rhythmicity. The revolution of the earth around its own axis is the reason for our 24. h calendar day. The revolution of the earth also causes the light-dark cycles associated with day and night. The earth has thus revolved on its own axis for millions of years. Life has originated and evolved under day night conditions resulting from the earth's revolution. Plants and animals have evolved since the origin of life by means of adaptation. They have developed adaptations to the spatial as well as the temporal order of the environment. Ecology is a subject that examines the details of adaptation of organisms in space. The study of the adaptations of organisms to the time structure of their immediate environment is the subject of a new discipline called chronobiology.