Abstract
The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is a diurnal insect active during the day with consolidated sleep at night. Social interactions between pairs of flies have been shown to affect locomotor activity patterns, but effects on locomotion and sleep patterns have not been assessed for larger populations. Here, we use a commercially available locomotor activity monitor (LAM25H) system to record and analyze sleep behavior. Surprisingly, we find that same-sex populations of flies synchronize their sleep/wake activity, resulting in a population sleep pattern, which is similar but not identical to that of isolated individuals. Like individual flies, groups of flies show circadian and homeostatic regulation of sleep, as well as sexual dimorphism in sleep pattern and sensitivity to starvation and a known sleep-disrupting mutation (amnesiac). Populations of flies, however, exhibit distinct sleep characteristics from individuals. Differences in sleep appear to be due to olfaction-dependent social interactions and change with population size and sex ratio. These data support the idea that it is possible to investigate neural mechanisms underlying the effects of population behaviors on sleep by directly looking at a large number of animals in laboratory conditions.
Highlights
Sleep has been observed throughout the animal kingdom, and performs important physiological functions thatReceived June 30, 2015; accepted August 6, 2015; First published August 13, 2015. 1The authors declare no competing financial interests. 2Author contributions: C.L. and L.C.G. designed and C.L., P.R.H., N.D., andS.A. performed all experiments; C.L. analyzed the data and made the figures; C.L. and L.C.G. wrote the paper with the help of all other authors.are not yet completely understood
Population sleep patterns differ from those of isolated individuals Drosophila are normally social animals (Hay, 1973), and their behavior and daily activity patterns can be changed by interactions with other individuals in a population (Levine et al, 2002; Krupp et al, 2008; Schneider et al, 2012)
To address whether the features of sleep in populations of flies are similar to those observed for individual flies, we compared sleep patterns of isolated individual Canton S wild-type flies to those from groups of Canton S flies using data collected with the DAM2 and LAM25H systems
Summary
Sleep has been observed throughout the animal kingdom, and performs important physiological functions thatReceived June 30, 2015; accepted August 6, 2015; First published August 13, 2015. 1The authors declare no competing financial interests. 2Author contributions: C.L. and L.C.G. designed and C.L., P.R.H., N.D., andS.A. performed all experiments; C.L. analyzed the data and made the figures; C.L. and L.C.G. wrote the paper with the help of all other authors.are not yet completely understood. Sleep has been observed throughout the animal kingdom, and performs important physiological functions that. Received June 30, 2015; accepted August 6, 2015; First published August 13, 2015. S.A. performed all experiments; C.L. analyzed the data and made the figures; C.L. and L.C.G. wrote the paper with the help of all other authors. Drosophila melanogaster exhibits sleep as defined by consolidated circadian periods of immobility that are associated with an increased arousal threshold. The amount of quiescence in flies is subject to a homeostatic regulatory mechanism (Hendricks et al, 2000; Shaw et al., July/August 2015, 2(4) e0071-15.2015 1–17
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