A high throughput method for egg size measurement in Drosophila

Life-history traits are used as proxies of fitness in insects including Drosophila. Egg size is an adaptive and ecologically important trait potentially with genetic variation across different populations. However, the low throughput of manual measurement of egg size has hampered the widespread use of this trait in evolutionary biology and population genetics. We established a method for accurate and high throughput measurement of Drosophila egg size using large particle flow cytometry (LPFC). The size estimates using LPFC are accurate and highly correlated with the manual measurements. The measurement of egg size is high throughput (average of 214 eggs measured per minute) and viable eggs of a specific size can be sorted rapidly (average of 70 eggs per minute). Sorting by LPFC does not reduce the survival of eggs making it a suitable approach for sorting eggs for downstream analyses. This protocol can be applied to any organism within the detectable size range (10-1500 m) of the large particle flow cytometers. We discuss the potential applications of this method and provide recommendations for optimizing the protocol for other organisms.