Sleep patterns in Generalists and Specialists

Abstract

Most animals show sleep-like behaviors. The presence of quiescence or a sleep-like state across taxa indicates an early appearance in animal evolution. The amount of sleep required by an animal differs widely between species and can depend on a lot of factors like body size, foraging strategies, diet, as well as external factors. However, for every species, there exist an optimum range of sleep and sleeping pattern, which would be followed by the individuals of the species. In this project, we attempt to provide a correlation between the foraging strategies and sleep, and use a new, robust method for observing sleep in insects. The aim of the project is to study the sleeping patterns of insects, and compare between closely related species that employ generalist and specialist strategies and see if organisms with different lifestyles but similar physiologies sleep differently.