How Many Things by Season Season’d Are
Date
2009-10
Authors
Jackson, Sue
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AOSIS OpenJournals
Abstract
People born between June and September
in the southern hemisphere are more
likely to suffer from schizophrenia than
those born in other months; a quarter of
the entire genome of Arabidopsis thaliana
(a cress plant) is devoted to sensing and
responding to environmental changes;
and human basal metabolic rate drops to
40% of normal values during starvation.
These are some of the many remarkable
facts that I learned while reading this
book, which successfully unites wideranging
discussions of plant phenology,
animal behaviour and evolutionary physiology;
the seasonality of human disorders
as diverse as malaria and seasonal
affective disorder; and the timing of crime
and of human reproductive rhythms—all
in the context of climate change. This is
the second book by the neurobiologist/
science writer team that produced a wellreceived
description of circadian rhythms,
Rhythms of Life, in 2004. Seasons of Life
takes a wider perspective, addressing
organisms’ anticipation of and responses
to the environmental changes that follow
seasonal rather than daily rhythms.Many
biologists will share the authors’ concluding
wish for a better understanding of
biological rhythms, in the hope that this
might improve our chances of slowing
down the accelerating extinction rate
resulting from climate change.
Description
The original publication is available at http://www.sajs.co.za/
Keywords
Seasons of Life: The biological rhythms that living things need to thrive and survive., Russell G. Foster, Leonard Kreitzman, Book review, Schizophrenia, Seasonal affective disorder, Seasonal rhythms
Citation
Jackson, S. 2009. How Many Things by Season Season’d Are. South African Journal of Science, 105, 332-333.