Antscan, a pioneering platform with micrometer-resolution reconstructions of ants, has become a major resource for the scientific community. Evan Economo, a biodiversity scientist at the University of Maryland, and Julian Katzke, an entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., created Antscan. With this platform come a wealth of anatomical survey data that sample this complex functional morphology in fine detail. With high-res scans of all 792 species, encompassing all 212 genera, Antscan encompasses the vast majority of described ant diversity.
Researchers and educators can still engage these models through an online portal. This process completely changes the ways that scientists are able to both study and interact with ant morphology. This pioneering methodology is magnificent at amplifying groundbreaking scientific discovery, but it is a portal to unparalleled educational outreach and artistic endeavor.
Innovative Technology Behind Antscan
Assembling Antscan involved sending approximately 2,200 preserved ant specimens through micro-CT beamlines. This was done at the synchrotron light source facility of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. This state-of-the-art technology allows researchers to study delicate specimens externally, eliminating the need for unwanted dissection. The resulting scans show stunning detail down to the armored exoskeletons, muscles, nerves, and needle-like stingers of the ants.
Thanks to synchrotron micro-CT imaging, the Antscan team were able to capture hard exoskeletons and soft tissues in remarkable detail. This careful, laborious practice makes possible a remarkable precision of ant anatomy. More importantly, it reveals insights that traditional survey and polling methods could never uncover.
Economo underscored the significance of this dataset for scientific research. He stated, “This is kind of like having a genome for shape.”
The introduction of neural networks is another key factor, especially to the efficiency of Antscan. Such networks greatly accelerate the process of detecting and analyzing anatomical structures. They are extremely helpful in increasing the research capabilities for scientists studying ants and their evolutionary relationships.
A Permanent Record of Ant Diversity
Digital Antscan builds an enduring, high-res catalogue of life’s design. This digital anatomical time capsule permits us to query and re-explore this knowledge long after delicate specimens have deteriorated or wild populations have vanished. This last feature is especially important as it enables scientists to see trends over the whole evolutionary tree of ants.
The dataset has already been employed to study various scientific inquiries, including the distribution of a biomineral “armor” layer in ants. Researchers officially introduced this layer in a Central American leaf-cutter ant back in 2020. It does a great job highlighting the amazing evolutionary transformations that ant family have gone through.
Katzke expressed the broad applicability of this dataset. “It is an extremely rich dataset that can be used for a number of different applications in science, but for the arts and outreach and education.”
Researchers predict that Antscan could catalyze a significant shift in morphological studies, paralleling the impact that large-scale sequencing projects and genomic databases have had on DNA research over the past two decades.
Implications for Future Research and Education
Antscan has standardized its comprehensive dataset at scale and made it publicly available so that anyone can build on it. This primes the company to revolutionize the field of biological discovery and learning. The platform begins with the acknowledgement that amazing collaborations often result when researchers, educators, and artists work together, cultivating an ecosystem where great ideas can thrive across disciplines.
As David Blackburn noted, “The more people that access and work with the stuff in our museums, whether it’s physically or digitally, the greater value they add.” Antscan’s mission is strongly rooted in this ethos. It aims to improve availability of core scientific tools and resources, and promote increased interaction with the world of biodiversity.
This new cooperative agreement has received cheers from the field’s most luminary figures. Our production and media associate, Vladimir Blagoderov, praised its quality, saying “It is indeed a stunning work. These endorsements demonstrate just how great Antscan’s potential is to push the field of entomology—and the world—forward.
“I would really like to see these big libraries of organismal form one day be useful for people in robotics and engineering, so they can mine these data for new kinds of biomechanical designs.”