GMT vs BST reference_hour adjustment

[cq18252]

Hi, I’m running a set of Drosophila activity experiments on a 9–9 LD cycle. Some replicates were run when the platform was set to BST (GMT+1) and others when it was set to GMT.

I’m loading the data using:

dt <- load_ethoscope(query,
reference_hour = 9.0,
FUN = sleep_annotation,
cache = CACHE)

My understanding is that reference_hour defines ZT0 (lights-on) for each experiment.

So my question is: Do I need to adjust reference_hour for replicates run in BST vs GMT, or does load_ethoscope() automatically account for the platform timezone so that ZT0 aligns correctly across replicates?

I’ve inspected the loaded data and activity peaks appear to align between replicates of the same genotype, but I want to make sure this is the correct approach?

[ggilestro]

That's more a question for https://github.com/rethomics/scopr
If you change timezone on the node, then you may have to take that into account when loading the data. We tend to keep our platform in GMT all year long.