SLEEB Lab Bonn

Off to the caves! We’re finally back in the field: filming sleepy cave spiders! 🕷️🕸️ Let’s see what we find! #fieldwork #animalsleep #caves @roald-arboel.com @nadjageiger.bsky.social @roesslerdaniela.bsky.social @unibonn.bsky.social

Scientists video REM-like sleep in Australian jumping spider species

🕷️💤 New paper in time for 🎃! Do #spiders really sleep? In our new study on #Portia fimbriata we tested all behavioural criteria of #sleep and found evidence for regulated, two-stage sleep with recurring REM-like stages. Out in @pnas.org! @roesslerdaniela.bsky.social 📄 tinyurl.com/3fky8ze7 🧵1/9

🚨New paper🚨 Garden #spiders are everywhere right now—big, beautiful ladies, still in the hub of their 🕸️ But they are not just waiting, at night they also 💤! We found behavioral signatures of sleep in the wild. Out in #AnimalBehaviour w/ @mherberstein.bsky.social tinyurl.com/uznvv58y 🧵1/5

Our postdoc @roald-arboel.com made a thing! #Croppy is #free and awesome for fast and effective #video #editing and it has a #GUI! Need to crop a part of a video? Need to trim a video? Need to combine videos? Need to compress a video? roald-arboel.com/croppy/

A little video of us setting up the #cameras to film #spiders in a #cave. What a fun alternative to sitting at the desk in 34 degrees! Refreshing 6 degrees (Celsius) inside the cave! 🙃

Massive congrats to @maartjevandenderen.bsky.social for defending her fantastic thesis! 🥳 Maartje did her scientific illustration thesis with us on #spider #sleep @sleeblab.bsky.social Super cool experience & a pleasure to advise her. 👀 to hire an #illustrator >>> 💻 📞 Maartje!!! Colored pencil 🤯:

Very excited to share our discovery of an engineering masterpiece from the Australian rainforest! In our latest paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social we report a hunting strategy in a spider, whose web outperforms every known biological catapult system.

New paper alert!🕷️✨ Tiny spider. Shiny abdomen. Suspiciously wiggly bum. In our new study, we asked what abdomen bobbing in this jumping spider is really all about: Cute? Yes. Meaningful? Let’s find out...! [1/8] @unibonn.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00265-026-03745-1

🚨 TWERK ALERT 🚨 New publication from @sleeblab.bsky.social ! This was a very fun project to write up, co-lead by @nadjageiger.bsky.social and Chiara Hirschkorn. If you are interested why these spiders might bob their abdomen: link.springer.com/article/10.1... (Short thread following soon)

All of the Reviews and Commentaries in our new Special Issue, Sensory Perception in a Changing World, are available for FREE! tinyurl.com/5t3mkrny

Introducing the crew to German carnival with funky #DYI #jellyfish group costumes @unibonn.bsky.social @roald-arboel.com @mchagourin.bsky.social

Congratulations @rochellemeah.bsky.social @ecologyofvision.bsky.social (and all our wonderful coauthors!) on her first PhD publication in @currentbiology.bsky.social 🤩 Light pollution suppresses natural peaks in activity AND natural celestial polarization patterns at key times in arthropods 🕷️🦋✨

Not from our lab, but a cool first author publication from our fabulous Postdoc @roald-arboel.com - if you are interested in sweet #lowcost setups and #animal #behavior - check out his paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... …and brace yourselves for more papers to come ;)

🎬 That’s a wrap! 🥹 after a bumpy last week off grid together with the fabulous @vanspidergirl.bsky.social & @madmetazoa.bsky.social we successfully finished an incredible field season on #portia and #invertsleep in the oldest rainforest of the world. Nothing but grateful for this experience ❤️

Things that can happen while filming Portia in the field: we had a (not so) little visitor wandering by with his chicks! Not sure who was more surprised… #cassowary #portia #daintree #storiesfromthefield

Rain and cameras are not best friends - @nadjageiger.bsky.social and I are doing our best to keep them dry and rolling all night despite - or because of - the rain #haaaaard #camerashaterain

We love behaviors that are usually hidden- often due to the sheer fact that they are hard to observe-like sleep. But we’ve also been wondering about things like: what do these spiders do (and how do they sleep) in heavy tropical rain?? We are determined to find out! #portia #fieldfun #RAINforest

Meet an outrageously cool jumping spider (maybe not as cool as Portia but still pretty badass): Bavia! As you can see, she also likes a good spider snack around bedtime. Not sure if she was able to finish this one. She already looked pretty stuffed 😬

Our tropical lab for the next couple of weeks :) #australia #daintree #spiders

@nadjageiger.bsky.social & @roesslerdaniela.bsky.social are back in the field in Australia filming and experimenting with the best spider in the world - PORTIA. More soon!