Research Perspective Volume 2, Issue 8 pp 519—522

Figure 1. Starvation impairs sleep initiation but not maintenance. (A,B) A Drosophila activity monitor typically used for sleep studies can record up to 32 flies simultaneously. An individual fly is housed in each vertical tube and an infrared beam detects activity. The large horizontal tubes contain either food (yellow) or agar (translucent). Sliding barriers control access to each substrate [32]. Both tubes contain food for fed controls (A, top), while agar is provided to the starved experimental group (A, bottom; and B) on day 2 of testing the experiment (starved, experimental). (C,D) Female flies starved for 24 hours sleep less than fed counterparts. Shaded area (C) represents lights-off. (E, F) The total number of sleep bouts (Bout #) is decreased in starved flies while average bout length does not differ from fed counterparts. Asterisk denotes significant difference (P<0.01, ANOVA) from control groups. Data are mean ± SEM.