Evolutionary Biology / Biodiversity Informatics
High-throughput phenomics of global ant biodiversity
Researchers used high-throughput synchrotron X-ray microtomography to build the world's largest open 3D phenomic library for ants, covering nearly 800 species and linking morphological data to genomic resources.
Imagine being able to take a detailed 3D MRI of a tiny ant — seeing every hair, joint, and internal organ — without cutting it open or even touching it. That's basically what this team did, but at incredible speed and scale. They used a giant particle accelerator (a synchrotron) that shoots powerful X-rays to scan 2,193 ants from nearly 800 different species, creating detailed 3D models of each one. They then put all these 3D models on a free website for anyone to explore. Think of it like Google Maps, but for ant bodies. Scientists can now use computers to automatically compare body shapes across thousands of ants, pairing those body blueprints with DNA data to understand how ants evolved and why different species look so different from each other.
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Created a publicly accessible repository of 2,193 whole-body 3D micro-CT datasets covering 212 ant genera and 792 species, broadly representing the ant phylogeny.
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Applied high-throughput synchrotron X-ray microtomography at the KIT Light Source to image ethanol-preserved ant specimens without invasive staining, dramatically increasing scanning throughput.
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Synchronized phenomic data with large-scale genome sequencing projects (including the Global Ant Genomics Alliance), linking 585 scans to genomic data for 186 species.
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Standardized scanning and reconstruction protocols enable automated machine learning and computer-vision analyses across the dataset.
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Demonstrated scalability of the workflow as a model for 3D digitization of other small organism groups across the tree of life.
The big data era in biology is underway, but the study of organismal form has been slow to capitalize on advances in imaging and computation. Imaging approaches can digitize whole organisms, but low throughput has limited the effort to document morphological diversity. Here, within the open science initiative 'Antscan', we applied high-throughput synchrotron X-ray microtomography to capture phenotypes across a diverse and ecologically dominant insect group: ants. At https://www.antscan.info , we provide 2,193 whole-body three-dimensional ant datasets from 212 genera and 792 species to broadly cover the ant phylogeny with a global scope, also pairing phenomic data with genome sequencing projects. Scans acquired with standardized parameters facilitate automated analysis, and free access to data can broaden the audience and incentivize methods development. Antscan presents a scalable approach to create libraries of diverse anatomies, heralding an era of studies on the evolution, structure and function of organismal phenotypes.