Fig. 1

The MAFE assay to quantify food ingestion. a In adult fruit flies, the total food intake is determined by multiple interconnected behavioral elements including foraging (grey), feeding initiation (blue), feeding termination (orange), and food ingestion (green). We here developed a quantitative MAFE assay to specifically measure food ingestion (green). b A representative illustration of the MAFE assay. c A diagram illustrating the protocols of the MAFE assay. For details, refer to Material and Methods. d A waterfall chart showing the cumulative duration of feeding bouts during a meal on 100 mM sucrose (n = 64). The blue bar represents the total duration of a meal. The height between the upper and lower bound of each orange bar represents the duration of an indicated feeding bout(s). e A waterfall chart showing the cumulative ingested volume of feeding bouts during a meal on 100 mM sucrose (n = 29-102). The blue bar represents the total ingested volume of a meal. The height of the upper and lower bound of each orange bar represents the ingested volume of an indicated feeding bout(s). f Volume of 100 mM sucrose consumed by flies at different time points after the previous meal (n = 22-102). The “meal size” bar is re-plotted from Fig. 1d illustrating the total volume ingested during a meal. Sample size for each data set was summarized in Tab. S1. Error bars represent SEM. ns, P > 0.05; *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001; ****P < 0.0001. One-way ANOVA followed by Bonferroni post hoc test was used for comparisons for more than 2 groups. Two-way ANOVA (and post hoc test if applicable) was applied for comparisons with more than one variant