A micro-CT-based standard brain atlas of the bumblebee
File(s)Rother2021_Article_AMicro-CT-basedStandardBrainAt.pdf (4.95 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
In recent years, bumblebees have become a prominent insect model organism for a variety of biological disciplines, particularly to investigate learning behaviors as well as visual performance. Understanding these behaviors and their underlying neurobiological principles requires a clear understanding of brain anatomy. Furthermore, to be able to compare neuronal branching patterns across individuals, a common framework is required, which has led to the development of 3D standard brain atlases in most of the neurobiological insect model species. Yet, no bumblebee 3D standard brain atlas has been generated. Here we present a brain atlas for the buff-tailed bumblebee Bombus terrestris using micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) scans as a source for the raw data sets, rather than traditional confocal microscopy, to produce the first ever micro-CT-based insect brain atlas. We illustrate the advantages of the micro-CT technique, namely, identical native resolution in the three cardinal planes and 3D structure being better preserved. Our Bombus terrestris brain atlas consists of 30 neuropils reconstructed from ten individual worker bees, with micro-CT allowing us to segment neuropils completely intact, including the lamina, which is a tissue structure often damaged when dissecting for immunolabeling. Our brain atlas can serve as a platform to facilitate future neuroscience studies in bumblebees and illustrates the advantages of micro-CT for specific applications in insect neuroanatomy.
Date Issued
2021-06-28
Date Acceptance
2021-06-03
Citation
Cell and Tissue Research, 2021, 386, pp.29-46
ISSN
0302-766X
Publisher
Springer
Start Page
29
End Page
46
Journal / Book Title
Cell and Tissue Research
Volume
386
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34181089
PII: 10.1007/s00441-021-03482-z
Subjects
Bombus terrestris
Insect standard brain atlas
Iterative shape averaging
Neuropils
Reconstruction
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
Germany
Date Publish Online
2021-06-28