Delays in physiological systems

Summary In comparison to most physical or chemical systems, biological systems are of extreme complexity. In addition the time needed for transport or processing of chemical components or signals may be of considerable length. Thus temporal delays have to be incorporated into models leading to differential-difference and functional differential equations rather than ordinary differential equations. A number of examples, on different levels of biological organization, demonstrate that delays can have an influence on the qualitative behavior of biological systems: The existence or non-existence of instabilities and periodic or even chaotic oscillations can entirely depend on the presence or absence of delays with appropriate duration.