Fig. 1: PA14 infection induces behavioral changes, with a reduction in feeding as an early hallmark.

A Time course of WT behavior and viability upon infection. Top: Experimental design. Bottom: data. Error bars indicate standard deviation. For each genotype, n = 10 animals per replicate, 6 replicates. B Top: experimental design. Bottom: feeding rates (pumps/min) of WT animals on indicated bacteria. Indicated statistical comparison were Wilcoxon test. C Feeding of animals on indicated bacteria for 20 h, and then assayed on the indicated bacteria 1 h after transfer. PA14 killing was by UV light. p values are with Wilcoxon rank sum test. D Feeding rates of indicated genotypes. E Feeding rates of WT animals on indicated bacteria. F Feeding rates of animals exposed to the indicated bacteria for 20 h and then assayed on the indicated bacteria 1 h after transfer. p values are with Wilcoxon rank sum test. Same OP50 to OP50 and PA14 to PA14 controls were used in 1 C and 1 F. G Feeding in response to exogenous serotonin (15 mM) for 10 min. Raincloud distributions are on right. p values are with Wilcoxon rank sum test. Box indicates interquartile range; whiskers show 5th and 95th percentiles; line shows median. Effects of 20 h of PA14 infection on feeding for mutant strains. The same ceh-17 animals are plotted in (H, I). J Behavior and viability upon infection, shown as (A). Error bars indicate standard deviation. For each genotype, n = 10 animals per replicate, 6 replicates. Median quiescence for flp-13 significantly different vs WT animals in (A). Two-tailed Mann–Whitney, *p < 0.05. Median time point at which 50% animals died not significantly different for flp-13 vs WT animals in Fig. 1A. Two-tailed Mann–Whitney, n.s. (p = 0.057). K Summary of neuropeptide function. For (B–F), (H–I), n’s are individual animals and are indicated on figure. Dots are individual animals; dark bar indicates mean. n.s. indicates p > 0.05. For (D, E), (H, I), asterisks above each condition indicate whether the feeding decrease was significantly different from the decrease in day matched WT controls. Empirical p-values indicated on figure. Bonferroni correction was applied. Source data are provided as a source data file.