Elevated Sleep Need in a Stress-resilient Species

Sleep is broadly conserved across the animal kingdom, but can vary widely between species. It is currently unclear which types of selective pressures and sleep regulatory mechanisms influence differences in sleep between species. The fruit fly has become a successful model system for examining sleep regulation and function, but little is known about the sleep patterns and need for sleep in many related fly species. Here, we find that , a fly species that has adapted to extreme desert environments, exhibits strong increases in sleep compared to . Long-sleeping show intact sleep homeostasis, indicating that these flies carry an elevated need for sleep. In addition, exhibit altered abundance or distribution of several sleep/wake related neuromodulators and neuropeptides that are consistent with their reduced locomotor activity, and increased sleep. Finally, we find that in a nutrient-deprived environment, the sleep responses of individual are correlated with their survival time. Our results demonstrate that is a novel model for studying organisms with high sleep need, and for exploring sleep strategies that provide resilience in extreme environments.