Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 21, 2025

Simultaneous Recording of Calcium Signals from Identified Neurons and Feeding Behavior of Drosophila melanogaster
Published on: April 26, 2012
Con-DAM: Simultaneous measurement of food intake and sleep in Drosophila at the single fly resolution
Breanna Beard1, Abigail Bohn1, Mubaraq Opoola1
1Department of Biology, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, United States.
Abstract:
Sleep and feeding are conserved behaviors across many taxa of the animal kingdom and are essential for an organism's survival and fitness. Although Drosophila has been used to study these behaviors for decades, concurrent measurement of these two behaviors in the same flies on solid media has been a challenge. Here, we report Con-DAM, which enables simultaneous quantification of food intake and sleep/activity at the single fly resolution. Since Con-DAM integrates the Con-Ex (Consumption-Excretion) assay and the DAM (Drosophila Activity Monitor), two widely used tools to quantify food consumption and sleep/activity in flies into a single unit, we expect Con-DAM to serve as an easy method for various purposes that require quantifying food consumption and sleep/activity in the same individual flies.

