Avian Sleep Group, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, 82319 Seewiesen, Germany
Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-1800, USA.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2017 Nov 19;372(1734). doi: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0251.
Despite being a prominent aspect of animal life, sleep and its functions remain poorly understood. As with any biological process, the functions of sleep can only be fully understood when examined in the ecological context in which they evolved. Owing to technological constraints, until recently, sleep has primarily been examined in the artificial laboratory environment. However, new tools are enabling researchers to study sleep behaviour and neurophysiology in the wild. Here, we summarize the various methods that have enabled sleep researchers to go wild, their strengths and weaknesses, and the discoveries resulting from these first steps outside the laboratory. The initial studies to 'go wild' have revealed a wealth of interindividual variation in sleep, and shown that sleep duration is not even fixed within an individual, but instead varies in response to an assortment of ecological demands. Determining the costs and benefits of this inter- and intraindividual variation in sleep may reveal clues to the functions of sleep. Perhaps the greatest surprise from these initial studies is that the reduction in neurobehavioural performance resulting from sleep loss demonstrated in the laboratory is not an obligatory outcome of reduced sleep in the wild.This article is part of the themed issue 'Wild clocks: integrating chronobiology and ecology to understand timekeeping in free-living animals'.
尽管睡眠是动物生命的一个显著特征,但它的功能仍然知之甚少。与任何生物过程一样,只有在它们进化的生态背景下研究,才能充分了解睡眠的功能。由于技术限制,直到最近,睡眠主要还是在人为的实验室环境中进行研究。然而,新的工具使研究人员能够在野外研究睡眠行为和神经生理学。在这里,我们总结了使睡眠研究人员能够进入野外的各种方法,它们的优缺点,以及这些实验室外的初步研究的发现。最初的“进入野外”研究揭示了睡眠中大量的个体间变异,并表明即使在个体内部,睡眠持续时间也不是固定的,而是根据各种生态需求而变化。确定这种个体间和个体内睡眠变化的成本和收益,可能有助于揭示睡眠的功能。这些初步研究中最令人惊讶的发现之一是,在实验室中证明的睡眠剥夺导致的神经行为表现下降,并不是在野外减少睡眠的必然结果。本文是主题为“野生生物钟:整合时间生物学和生态学以了解自由生活动物的计时”的特刊的一部分。