It is not a well studied phenomenon, but it is known to occur in certain types of cyanobacteria, whose endogenous cycles, or circadian rhythm, "resonates" or aligns with their environment.
It is known to occur in plants also, suggesting that any organism which is able to attune its natural growth cycles with its environment will have a competitive advantage over those that do not.
These studies have shown that an endogenous clock that resonates with environmental cycles leads to a competitive advantage in Arabidopsis thaliana.
[3] The “circadian resonance” increase in productivity may arise from appropriate anticipation of sunrise and sunset, allowing for timely synthesis of light-harvesting complex proteins and chlorophyll.
Therefore, the competitive advantage in A. thaliana further supports the idea that anticipation of environmental changes leads to enhanced fitness.
[4] R. palustris is a purple non-sulfur bacterium that has KaiB and KaiC genes and exhibit adaptive kaiC-dependent growth in 24h cyclic environments.
However, R. palustris was reported to show a poorly self-sustained intrinsic rhythm, and kaiC-dependent growth enhancement was not present under constant conditions.
[5] These mice had a mutation in the casein kinase 1Ɛ gene, which encodes an enzyme that is integral in controlling circadian cycle length.
While this concept was explored by researchers at Stanford in 1997,[7] and at the University of Massachusetts,[8] the term was coined in 2004 by Dr. W. Christopher Winter, a sleep specialist and neurologist studying the effects of travel between time zones on Major League Baseball (MLB) performance.
In a typical MLB season, it applies to approximately 20% of games played with the other 80% featuring teams at equal circadian advantage.
In 2018, pilot data collected by Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, was presented at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine's annual SLEEP meeting suggested National Football League teams perform better at night versus the day as a result of circadian advantage.