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Collective Dynamics of Sleep

Project description

The first ever look at the collective sleep dynamics of animal groups

Sleep is fundamentally tied to physical and cognitive well-being. Many studies have evaluated the effects of sleep, albeit primarily in individuals in sleep laboratories. The intricate dynamics of group behaviours and their role in sleep patterns are inaccessible with these methods. The European Research Council-funded CO-SLEEP project will integrate technology into observational methods to measure and model the collective dynamics of sleep among wild baboons. The team will follow and monitor 30 troops of wild baboons using GPS and accelerometry tracking, 3D laser scanning, thermal videography and advanced computational modelling. CO-SLEEP’s study is the first to measure the collective sleep behaviour of animal groups in a socially and ecologically relevant context.

Objective

Sleep is a biological imperative for all animals: insufficient sleep can have detrimental effects on individuals’ health, cognition, social functioning and overall fitness. Even among gregarious species, sleep has largely been studied in lone individuals in laboratory settings, divorced from relevant socio-ecological context, limiting our ability to understand how social environments shape, and are shaped by, the sleep patterns of their members. My goal is to bring the study of sleep into the collective context, understand how social processes structure the sleep patterns of individuals, groups and populations, and test how gregarious animals navigate the opportunities and constraints imposed by sleeping as part of a group. To do this, I will integrate cutting-edge technologies with traditional field-observation methods to measure and model the collective dynamics of sleep among wild baboons. To continuously monitor movement, position, and sleep of baboons at the individual, group, and population levels, I will use GPS and accelerometry tracking of members of 30 troops of wild baboons. This will be combined with 3-D laser scanning of the physical sleep environment, overnight thermal videography, sleep-disruption field experiments, focal sampling of social behaviors, and advanced computational modeling to shed light on how differentiated and multi-faceted social relationships shape individual and collective sleep decisions, and how these decisions, in turn, shape the overall social dynamics of groups. This ground-breaking project will be the first to measure the collective sleep behavior of animal groups in a socially and ecologically relevant context. As such, it has the potential to shed wholly new light on social and ecological trade-offs that gregarious species – like our own – must balance to satisfy the biological imperative of sleep.

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2021-COG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITAT KONSTANZ
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 912 102,00
Address
UNIVERSITATSSTRASSE 10
78464 Konstanz
Germany

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Region
Baden-Württemberg Freiburg Konstanz
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 912 102,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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