The Phasing of Sleep in Animals

Ball, Nigel J.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4757-2210-9_3

Cited by 15 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…From a strictly behavioral standpoint, a sleeping animal displays the following: 1) behavioral quiescence, 2) a species-specific posture which usually includes eyeclosure, 3) increased arousal threshold to stimulation, 4) rapid reversibility to wakefulness with sufficient stimulation (Piéron 1913;Flanigan 1972), and 5) an increase in sleep duration and/or intensity after sleep deprivation (i.e., homeostatic regulation) (Tobler 1985). In addition, in many animals, sleep occurs during a specific portion of the circadian rhythm (Ball 1992). Based strictly on the behavioral definition of sleep, birds in flight do not sleep because they are not quiescent.…”

Section: Sleep Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Do birds sleep in flight?

Rattenborg

2006

Naturwissenschaften

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The following review examines the evidence for sleep in flying birds. The daily need to sleep in most animals has led to the common belief that birds, such as the common swift (Apus apus), which spend the night on the wing, sleep in flight. The electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings required to detect sleep in flight have not been performed, however, rendering the evidence for sleep in flight circumstantial. The neurophysiology of sleep and flight suggests that some types of sleep might be compatible with flight. As in mammals, birds exhibit two types of sleep, slow-wave sleep (SWS) and rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep. Whereas, SWS can occur in one or both brain hemispheres at a time, REM sleep only occurs bihemispherically. During unihemispheric SWS, the eye connected to the awake hemisphere remains open, a state that may allow birds to visually navigate during sleep in flight. Bihemispheric SWS may also be possible during flight when constant visual monitoring of the environment is unnecessary. Nevertheless, the reduction in muscle tone that usually accompanies REM sleep makes it unlikely that birds enter this state in flight. Upon landing, birds may need to recover the components of sleep that are incompatible with flight. Periods of undisturbed postflight recovery sleep may be essential for maintaining adaptive brain function during wakefulness. The recent miniaturization of EEG recording devices now makes it possible to measure brain activity in flight. Determining if and how birds sleep in flight will contribute to our understanding of a largely unexplored aspect of avian behavior and may also provide insight into the function of sleep.

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Section: Sleep Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Do birds sleep in flight?

Rattenborg

2006

Naturwissenschaften

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“…One of the most fundamental descriptors of sleep concerns whether it occurs in one bout per 24-hour period of time (i.e., monophasic), or whether it encompasses multiple bouts in a daily cycle (polyphasic, Ball, 1992). The occurrence of sleep relative to the daily photoperiod varies across mammals, with most species exhibiting a polyphasic form of sleep characterized by short bouts of sleep throughout the day and night.…”

Section: ) Evolution Of Monophasic Sleepmentioning

confidence: 99%

Primate sleep in phylogenetic perspective

Nunn

Capellini²,

Preston³

et al. 2001

Evolution of Sleep

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“…Mammals also differ in how they accommodate sleep within their activity budgets (the ‘phasing’ of sleep; Stampi 1992); some species partition their sleep time into multiple bouts alternated with waking phases (polyphasic sleepers; e.g. cats; Ball 1992), while others concentrate the majority of their sleep into one bout per day (monophasic sleepers; e.g. chimpanzees; Ball 1992).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energetic constraints, not predation, influence the evolution of sleep patterning in mammals

et al. 2008

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Summary 1.Mammalian sleep is composed of two distinct states -rapid-eye-movement (REM) and non-REM (NREM) sleep -that alternate in cycles over a sleep bout. The duration of these cycles varies extensively across mammalian species. Because the end of a sleep cycle is often followed by brief arousals to waking, a shorter sleep cycle has been proposed to function as an anti-predator strategy. Similarly, higher predation risk could explain why many species exhibit a polyphasic sleep pattern (division of sleep into several bouts per day), as having multiple sleep bouts avoids long periods of unconsciousness, potentially reducing vulnerability. 2. Using phylogenetic comparative methods, we tested these predictions in mammals, and also investigated the relationships among sleep phasing, sleep-cycle length, sleep durations and body mass. 3. Neither sleep-cycle length nor phasing of sleep was significantly associated with three different measures of predation risk, undermining the idea that they represent anti-predator adaptations. 4. Polyphasic sleep was associated with small body size, shorter sleep cycles and longer sleep durations. The correlation with size may reflect energetic constraints: small animals need to feed more frequently, preventing them from consolidating sleep into a single bout. The reduced daily sleep quotas in monophasic species suggests that the consolidation of sleep into one bout per day may deliver the benefits of sleep more efficiently and, since early mammals were small-bodied and polyphasic, a more efficient monophasic sleep pattern could be a hitherto unrecognized advantage of larger size.

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The Phasing of Sleep in Animals

Cited by 15 publications

References 36 publications

Do birds sleep in flight?

Do birds sleep in flight?

Primate sleep in phylogenetic perspective

Energetic constraints, not predation, influence the evolution of sleep patterning in mammals

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