MAPLE: a Modular Automated Platform for Large-scale Experiments, a low-cost robot for integrated animal-handling and phenotyping

Genetic model system animals have significant scientific value in part because of large-scale experiments like screens, but performing such experiments over long time periods by hand is arduous and risks errors. Thus the field is poised to benefit from automation, just as molecular biology did from liquid-handling robots. We developed a Modular Automated Platform for Large-scale Experiments (MAPLE), a Drosophila-handling robot capable of conducting lab tasks and experiments. We demonstrate MAPLE’s ability to accelerate the collection of virgin female flies (a pervasive experimental chore in fly genetics) and assist high-throughput phenotyping assays. Using MAPLE to autonomously run a novel social interaction experiment, we found that 1) pairs of flies exhibit persistent idiosyncrasies in affiliative behavior, 2) these dyad-specific interactions require olfactory and visual cues, and 3) social interaction network structure is topologically stable over time. These diverse examples demonstrate MAPLE’s versatility as a general platform for conducting fly science automatically.