Taste as a marker for behavioral energy regulation:Replication and extension of meal pattern evidence from selectively bred rats

•Rat lines selectively bred on voluntary saccharin intake differ in the temporal organization of meals.•Meal parameter profiles implicate short-term satiety in line differences in meal frequency.•Effects on meal patterns of direct and indirect metabolic challenges indicate activation of different behavioral systems.•Meal patterning is a valuable tool for examining joint effects of dispositional and environmental influences on behavioral energy regulation. A key feature of energy regulation among species that eat discrete meals is meal patterning – meal frequency, size, and duration. Such animals can adjust to internal states and external circumstances with changes in one or more of those meal parameters, with or without altering total food intake. Relatively little is known about individual differences in meal patterning. We previously reported meal patterning differences between rat lines selectively bred for differential saccharin solution intake, lines that also differ in sensitivity to metabolic challenges: Relative to high-saccharin-consuming counterparts (HiS), male low-saccharin-consuming rats (LoS) ate smaller, more frequent meals. Those findings provided evidence of an association between taste and short term satiety. Twenty generations later, we describe systematic replication of the line difference in meal patterns in males and females using two different kinds of reinforcer pellet. The previous study was further extended by examining meal parameters (1) with bi- and multivariate analyses and (2) after acute food restriction and a moderate stressor. Results are discussed within a behavior-systems framework incorporating taste as a marker for behavioral energy regulation.