Thu Oct 9

MAIN POINTS
Fireflies have a method of synchronizing their flashes with each other, but only if the stimulus is at a rate that they can learn to match. The first part of the model describes the firefly as the simple oscillator on the circle with period little-omega, and the stimulus as the oscillator with the period big omega. Equation (2) shows a simple model of the attempt to synchronize. Terms are introduced to nondimensionalize the model, and shifting the mu term changes the nature of fixed points, with saddle-node bifurcation behavior. A fixed point represents a part of the model where the firefly's rhythm is phase-locked to the stimulus.

CHALLENGES
There's no indication of how the model in equation (2) was derived— what were the logical steps in producing that equation? Also, I don't know what steps they took to decide how to nondimensionalize to create the new terms... it would be nice to step through that.

REFLECTIONS
When I arrived at this section I realized that I have read a book by this same author when I was in high school, about synchronization, that was more of a popular science book. It's cool that we can model something biological already, just by knowing bifurcations and flow on a circle.