How Sleep Plays a Role in Regulating Body Temperature and Metabolic Rates in Primates
850 Words3 Pages
This study aims at identifying if and how sleep plays a role in regulating body temperature and metabolic-rate in primates. Further, a hibernating primate, the lemuriform Cheirogaleus medius(Fat-tailed dwarf lemur) in specific, will be examined because hibernation has a direct correlation with hypothermia and reduced metabolic-rate. This primate was used because it is known to experience lengthy periods of hibernation and lives in a temperate climate of Madagascar. It is hypothesized that hibernation has not only a direct relationship with these two factors, but specifically that metabolic rate will dramatically decrease and core body temperature drifts towards the temperature of the environment that occupies. This study is a randomized clinical trial because EEG recordings were done on these primates under four different conditions. These four different conditions involved observing three lemurs during sleep in non-hibernating season, five during hibernation season in the wild, one during hibernation in the wild with simultaneous metabolic rate measurements, and one during hibernation. A huge ecological variable that could play a role was that the lemurs were not in their natural environment while being observed on the EEG and oxygen analyzer. To cancel out this variable the lemurs that were studied were placed in free-range rooms that simulated their natural habitat. A source of selection bias is existent because all study subjects were from the same small breeding