Feeding mistiming decreases reproductive fitness in flies

Abstract

The diurnally active fruit flies prefer a major meal in the morning. Feeding the flies in the evening uncouples their metabolic cycle from circadian activity rhythms. A paper by Xu et al. in this issue of Cell Metabolism found that such uncoupled rhythms reduce egg laying.

Figure 1. Tissue-specific circadian clocks and feeding time impact reproductive output in Drosophila

This figure summarizes the findings by Xu et al (Xu, 2011). (a) A wild-type female Drosophila that feeds ad libitum (a large meal in the morning and a smaller one later) has synchronized brain-specific and fat body-specific clocks and lays a certain number of eggs/day. (b) A genetic disruption of the fat body-specific clock results in fewer eggs. (c) Restriction of food availability to the preferred feeding time of dawn does not impact the number of eggs. (d) If the same amount of food is ingested when the fly usually feeds very little, the brain and fat body clocks become desynchronized and egg production is reduced. (e) Genetic disruption of the circadian clock in the entire organism reduces the number of eggs laid but is not impacted by (f) feeding times.