Processing sleep data created with the Drosophila Activity Monitoring (DAM) System

Adult behavioral assays have been used with great success in Drosophila melanogaster to identify circadian rhythm genes. In particular, the locomotor activity assay can identify altered behavior patterns over the course of several days in small populations, or even individual flies. Sleep is a highly conserved behavior that is required for optimal performance and, in many cases, life of an organism. Drosophila demonstrate a behavioral state that shows traits consistent with sleep: periods of relative behavioral immobility that coincide with an increased arousal threshold after ~5 min of inactivity, regulated by circadian and homeostatic mechanisms. However, because flies do not produce brain waves recordable by electroencephalography, sleep researchers use behavior-based paradigms to infer when a fly is asleep, as opposed to awake but immobile. Data on Drosophila activity can be collected using an automated monitoring system to provide insight into sleep duration, consolidation, and latency, as well as sleep deprivation and rebound. This protocol details the use of Counting Macro, an Excel-based program, to process data created with the Drosophila Activity Monitoring (DAM) System from TriKinetics for sleep analyses. Specifically, it details the steps necessary to convert the raw data created by the DAM System into sleep duration and consolidation data, broken down into the light (L), dark (D), light:dark cycling (LD), and constant darkness (DD) phases of a behavior experiment.