  In many natural synchronization phenomena, communication between individual
elements occurs not directly, but rather through the environment. One of these
instances is bacterial quorum sensing, where bacteria release signaling
molecules in the environment which in turn are sensed and used for population
coordination. Extending this motivation to a general non- linear dynamical
system context, this paper analyzes synchronization phenomena in networks where
communication and coupling between nodes are mediated by shared dynamical quan-
tities, typically provided by the nodes' environment. Our model includes the
case when the dynamics of the shared variables themselves cannot be neglected
or indeed play a central part. Applications to examples from systems biology
illustrate the approach.
