Context-specific comparison of sleep acquisition systems in Drosophila

Abstract

Sleep is conserved across phyla and can be measured through electrophysiological or behavioral characteristics. The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, provides an excellent model for investigating the genetic and neural mechanisms that regulate sleep. Multiple systems exist for measuring fly activity, including video analysis and single-beam (SB) or multi-beam (MB) infrared (IR)-based monitoring. In this study, we compare multiple sleep parameters of individual flies using a custom-built video-based acquisition system, and commercially available SB- or MB-IR acquisition systems. We report that all three monitoring systems appear sufficiently sensitive to detect changes in sleep duration associated with diet, age, and mating status. Our data also demonstrate that MB-IR detection appeared more sensitive than the SB-IR for detecting baseline nuances in sleep architecture, while architectural changes associated with varying life-history and environment were generally detected across all acquisition types. Finally, video recording of flies in an arena allowed us to measure the effect of ambient environment on sleep. These experiments demonstrate a robust effect of arena shape and size as well as light levels on sleep duration and architecture, and highlighting the versatility of tracking-based sleep acquisition. These findings provide insight into the context-specific basis for choosing between Drosophila sleep acquisition systems, describe a novel cost-effective system for video tracking, and characterize sleep analysis using the MB-IR sleep analysis. Further, we describe a modified dark-place preference sleep assay using video tracking, confirming that flies prefer to sleep in dark locations.

translin Is Required for Metabolic Regulation of Sleep

“…A number of systems have been developed for high-resolution video tracking that may provide a more accurate measure of sleep compared to infrared-based monitoring systems [14–17]. Tracking analysis revealed that w 1118 control, but not trsn null flies, suppress sleep during starvation, confirming that the results obtained using infrared tracking are not an artifact of the sleep acquisition system (Figure S1F).…”

Most sleep does not serve a vital function. Evidence from Drosophila melanogaster

“…3B) and the strong increase in micro-movements (Fig. 3C) are likely to represent an increase in food intake and egg-laying activity and may explain why such a strong decline in sleep amount was never identified using different tools (27,43,44). Interestingly, four-dimensional behavioural fingerprinting showed that the short sleep phenotype observed upon mating is qualitatively different from the one observed as natural variation in the CantonS population ( …”

“…This system, however, provides only limited spatial resolution which -unsurprisingly -results in an overestimation of sleep amounts (27). A growing number of laboratories are therefore transitioning to more accurate systems based on computer assisted video-tracking (27)(28)(29)(30)(31).…”

“…A growing number of laboratories are therefore transitioning to more accurate systems based on computer assisted video-tracking (27)(28)(29)(30)(31). To further improve our confidence in sleep estimation, we recently introduced a machine-learning approach that uses supervised learning to detect not only walking activity, but micro-movements too: e.g.…”

An FIM-Based Long-Term In-Vial Monitoring System for Drosophila Larvae

“…This concerns mice [12]- [14], Caenorhabditis elegans [15]- [17], as well as Drosophila flies [18]- [22]. However, to the best of our knowledge there is no system available for monitoring the behaviour of Drosophila at the larval states in culture vials for a long time period.…”