An atlas of the bumblebee mind

The buff-tailed bumblebee Bombus terrestris is among the commonest bumblebee species in Europe. It will not be solely energetic in nature as a pollinator—people additionally use it in greenhouses and foil tunnels to get good harvests of tomatoes or strawberries.

The buff-tailed bumblebee can be utilized in science: “Basic analysis is more and more utilizing it as a model organism to research studying and reminiscence, the visible system, flight control and navigation talents,” says Dr. Keram Pfeiffer, Professor of neurobiology on the Biocenter of Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany.

Pfeiffer investigates the neuronal foundation of spatial orientation in bugs. Together along with his doctoral scholar Lisa Rother and a global workforce, he’s now presenting the primary atlas of a buff-tailed bumblebee mind based mostly on computed tomographic (CT) knowledge within the journal Cell and Tissue Research.

Nadine Kraft and Emmy Noether group chief Dr. Basil el Jundi (each JMU) in addition to Dr. Richard J. Gill and Dr. Dylan Smith from Imperial College in London have been additionally concerned within the work.

Data averaged from ten bumblebee brains

To create the atlas, the analysis workforce took micro-CT photos of ten heads of buff-tailed bumblebees. From these, they first extracted the image data displaying the brains. In every of those knowledge stacks, 30 mind areas of the bumblebee have been manually reconstructed in three dimensions. On JMU’s high-performance computing cluster Julia, a normal mind was then calculated from the ten knowledge units, based mostly on their imply values.

The outcome might be considered within the publicly accessible insectbraindb database: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12158/SIN-0000010.3

“The atlas will be used for research in which neuronal circuits are analysed. The functional principles of such circuits are often generally valid, so they also occur in humans, for example,” explains Pfeiffer.

Micro-CT affords benefits

Similar mind atlases exist already for quite a few different insect species. However, none of them are based mostly on micro-CT photos, however a mix of immunostaining of synaptic areas and confocal microscopy.

Compared to micro-CT, this method has two disadvantages: First, the decision within the z-direction (entrance to again) is way decrease than the lateral decision. Secondly, a mind should be dissected for immunostaining. In the method, the outer mind areas particularly might be broken and may shift in place.

Micro-CT permits the mind to be left within the animal. Thus, all components stay intact and of their pure place. In addition, the decision of micro-CT photos is similar in all instructions. This simplifies the later insertion of neuronal knowledge and offers extra element when considered from the facet.

Goal: mix each strategies

“We are presently additionally engaged on an atlas of the bumblebee mind utilizing the standard methodology of confocal microscopy,” says Pfeiffer. This methodology has the benefit—at the least in the mean time—that the distinction and determination of the info are higher.

In order to mix some great benefits of each strategies, the conventionally created atlas will likely be registered into the micro-CT atlas on the finish. The outcome will likely be an atlas that provides each excessive decision and excessive distinction in addition to a practical spatial place of the person mind areas in relation to one another.

At the second, solely commonplace microscopic strategies can be found for staining particular person nerve cells. The knowledge collected with these strategies can solely be inserted into the usual brain with restrictions. “We therefore want to develop staining protocols that allow neuronal structures to be recorded directly with micro-CT,” publicizes the JMU neurobiologist.