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 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 an NIH grant to study the phylogeny of sleep. Dr McNamara is the recipient of a VA Merit Review Award for the study of Parkinson's Disease and several National Institutes of Health 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 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 been collaborating with Dr Charles L. Nunn on the application of comparative methods to problems in mammalian biology and physiology.

Dr Charles Nunn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. Dr Nunn completed his PhD at Duke University in biological anthropology and anatomy, and he conducted postdoctoral research on primate disease ecology at 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.