Evolution of Sleep: Phylogenetic and Functional Perspectives

Research during the past two decades has produced major advances in understanding sleep within particular species. Simultaneously, molecular advances have made it possible to generate phylogenetic trees, while new analytical methods provide the tools to examine macroevolutionary change on these trees. These methods have recently been applied to questions concerning the evolution of distinctive sleep state characteristics and functions. This book synthesizes recent advances in our understanding of the evolutionary origins of sleep and its adaptive function, and it lays the groundwork for future evolutionary research by assessing sleep patterns in the major animal lineages.

Dr. Patrick McNamara is an Associate Professor of Neurology at Boston University School of Medicine and Veterans Administration (VA) Boston Healthcare System. He is based in the Department of Neurology at Boston University School of Medicine. He is the director of the Evolutionary Neurobehavior Laboratory and was awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to study the phylogeny of sleep. Dr. McNamara is the recipient of a Veterans Affairs Merit Review Award for the study of Parkinson's disease and several NIH awards for the study of sleep mechanisms. He is also the author of Mind and Variability: Mental Darwinism, Memory and Self; An Evolutionary Psychology of Sleep and Dreams; and Nightmares: The Science and Solution of Those Frightening Visions During Sleep. Dr. Robert A. Barton is a Professor at Durham University and Director of the Evolutionary Anthropology Research Group. He has published numerous papers on the topic of brain evolution, and, in addition to an NIH-funded project on the phylogeny of sleep, he has collaborated with Dr. Charles L. Nunn on the application of comparative methods to questions in mammalian biology and physiology. Dr. Charles L. Nunn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. Dr. Nunn completed his Ph.D. at Duke University in biological anthropology and anatomy, and he conducted postdoctoral research on primate disease ecology at the University of Virginia and University of California Davis. He has had academic appointments in the United States (University of California Berkeley) and Germany (The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology). He is an author of Infectious Diseases in Primates: Behavior, Ecology, and Evolution, and his current research focuses on phylogenetic methods, disease ecology, and the evolution of primate behavior.