TY  - JOUR
A1  - Rother, Lisa
A1  - Kraft, Nadine
A1  - Smith, Dylan B.
A1  - El Jundi, Basil
A1  - Gill, Richard J.
A1  - Pfeiffer, Keram
T1  - A micro-CT-based standard brain atlas of the bumblebee
JF  - Cell and Tissue Research
N2  - 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.
KW  - neuropils
KW  - Bombus terrestris
KW  - insect standard brain atlas
KW  - iterative shape averaging
KW  - reconstruction
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-267783
SN  - 1432-0878
VL  - 386
IS  - 1
ER  -