Creatively designed and widely accessible, Antscan’s revolutionary digital platform provides a spectacular view into the secretive anatomy of ants, as revealed by their micrometer-resolution reconstructions. Antscan employs state of the art technology to peer beneath the armored exoskeletons of insects. It also reveals their internal architecture, like muscles, nerves, digestive tracts and needlelike stingers. That is what makes this transformational initiative so poised to catalyze new understandings of ant diversity and morphology.
A cross-disciplinary team of researchers worked together to design the project. They adapted a type of particle accelerator to produce exceptionally bright and coherent X-rays. This highly complex imaging tool rapidly produces complete, high-resolution maps of internal anatomy. This cuts out the often time-intensive and costly staining and preprocessing steps typically required when using conventional lab-based scanners.
A Comprehensive Dataset
The Antscan dataset includes an outstanding 792 species. Together, these species represent 212 unique genera, highlighting a critical slice of described ant diversity. This comprehensive collection has been made publicly available. As it is standardized for large-scale use, it is made available to researchers, educators, and everyday enthusiasts.
Antscan’s team assembled an impressive range of ant samples, including workers, queens, and males from museum collections around the globe. Nearly 2,200 fixed specimens were forwarded to Germany. They were scanned at two complementary micro-CT beamlines at the synchrotron light source facility KIT Light Source of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The outcome is more than 200 terabytes of data that have been carefully reconstructed into volumetric 3D representations.
“It is an extremely rich dataset that can be used for a number of different applications in science, but also for the arts and outreach and education.” – Julian Katzke
Advanced Imaging Techniques
Antscan’s technological foundation lies in its use of X-ray diffraction, a technique that allows precise revelation of a material’s mineral composition. With the use of this modeling technique, the research team was able to validate several plaid patterns in the structures surveyed. The researchers spotted detailed morphologies in the body of a tropical army ant subsoldier, called Eciton hamatum. This involved extensive imaging, including detailed descriptions of its brain, gut and sting apparatus.
As a complement to image acquisition and visualization, the project includes state-of-the-art neural networks that automate identification and analysis of anatomical structures. This unique combination of artificial intelligence and old-school biological research will help us make big breakthroughs in the study of morphology.
“This is kind of like having a genome for shape,” – Evan Economo
Among these, Antscan shines as a key resource for comparative studies on ants. Yet it offers a wealth of information, a mostly untapped trove, into their evolutionary relationships and anatomical differences.
Implications for Biodiversity Research
Aspects of morphology studies would be much helped if Antscan yields the results we expect. Its impact will be similar to the profound effect that big sequencing projects and genomic databases have had on DNA science over the last twenty years. Antscan produces a permanent, high-resolution digital archive of the architecture of life. This represents an anatomical time capsule that you can interrogate and explore years after delicate specimens have deteriorated or wild populations have disappeared.
Against the backdrop of a rapidly accelerating species extinction crisis on our planet, the significance of these efforts is hard to exaggerate. The platform serves to safeguard important photographic documentation of ant anatomy. The plan, quite rightly, focuses on the need to access biodiversity resources online.
“The more people that access and work with the stuff in our museums, whether it’s physically or digitally, the greater value they add,” – David Blackburn
Scientists from all disciplines—stock assessment, molecular ecology, fishery management, and beyond—can use this new dataset for valuable comparative analyses, ecological studies, and educational purposes.
“It provides an outstanding resource for comparative work across ants.” – Cameron Currie
In the meantime, scientists are already working to understand the broader implications of Antscan’s findings. This project has to be the perfect example of the leading edge of entomology.
“The full advantage of this dataset will be realized when these methods are deployed,” – Marek Borowiec
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