The Functional Organization and Evolution of a Novel Insect Visual System.

[摘要][0211770]昆虫视觉系统的功能组织与进化。昆虫的眼睛被称为复眼，通常由数千个微小的透镜组成，每个透镜捕捉空间中的单个图像点。复眼是按照昆虫甚至大多数甲壳类动物（虾、蟹等）在进化上保守的蓝图组织起来的。令人惊讶的是，扭曲翅膀的昆虫（链翅目）并没有遵循这个蓝图，而是有一只眼睛，它代表了一种介于脊椎动物和典型昆虫眼睛之间的形成图像的晶状体眼睛。在这种高度专业化的寄生昆虫群体中，几个大镜头每个捕捉一个小图像或视觉环境的“大块”。这些以晶状体为基础的积木组合在一起形成了一个小眼睛，可以观察到广阔的视野。这个项目的重点是这只独特眼睛的功能组织。这种中间组织摆脱了复眼和单晶状体眼的一些经典限制。对链状目眼睛类型的更深入了解可能有助于仿生学领域的发展，在这个领域，它可能会导致小型传感器的新技术，这些传感器可以对宽视野进行采样。这个项目的大部分将致力于研究整合单个透镜提供的部分图像的神经基质。在链翅目中，来自相邻小孔的视觉信息必须整合成一个大的连贯图像。理解执行这种整合的设计可能会揭示视觉研究中新的神经机制。由于这只眼睛与所有其他昆虫的眼睛如此不同，我们还将研究它发展的具体方面，并使用比较方法来研究它的进化起源。这个项目将在两个主要方面对我们的社会产生更广泛的影响：(1)它将揭示独特的神经和光学结构的组织、发展和进化，这些结构对于适应特定的生活方式很有趣，并且可能有潜力成为未来技术的基础；(2)它将提供相当大的教育效益，无论是在培训学生方面还是在教育更大的公众方面。在整个项目的任何时候都会有几名本科生参与。这些学生将有机会成为一个活跃的研究实验室的成员，在那里他们将接触到许多不同的技术和跨学科的训练。此外，政府亦会推行各种形式的外展及公众教育，包括以通俗语言制作网页及设计博物馆展览等。在《科学》杂志首次发表关于这些眼睛的文章后，公众已经表达了兴趣，这导致了《国家地理》、《时代》杂志、《纽约时报》、《科学美国人》、《发现》等杂志的文章。

Lay AbstractHoy (0211770) The functional organization and evolution of a novel insect visual system.The eyes of insects, which are called compound eyes, are generally constructed from thousands of tiny lenses, each of which captures a single image point in space. Compound eyes are organized following a blueprint that is evolutionarily conserved throughout insects and even most crustaceans (shrimp, crabs etc.). Surprisingly, the twisted-wing insect (Strepsiptera), does not follow this blueprint but instead has an eye that represents an intermediate form between an image forming lens eye, such as found in vertebrates, and the typical insect eye. In this highly specialized, parasitic group of insects, several large lenses each capture a small image or "chunk" of the visual environment. These lens-based building blocks together form a small eye that samples a wide visual field. This project focuses on the functional organization of this unique eye. This intermediate organization escapes some of the classical limitations of both the compound eye and the single lens eye. A deeper understanding of the strepsipteran eye type could contribute to the growing field of biomimicry, where it could lead to new technologies for small sensors that sample wide visual fields. Much of this project will be devoted to investigating the neural substrate that integrates the partial images supplied by individual lenses. In Strepsiptera the visual information from neighboring eyelets has to be integrated into one large coherent image. Understanding the design that performs such integration may reveal novel neural mechanisms in vision research. Because this eye is so different from that of all other insects, we will also investigate specific aspects of its development and use a comparative approach to investigate its evolutionary origin. There are two major aspects in which this project will have a broader impact on our society: (1) it will reveal the organization, development and evolution of unique neural and optical structures which are interesting as adaptations to a specific life style, and may have the potential to become the basis for future technologies, and (2) it will provide considerable educational benefits, both in terms of training students and in terms of educating the greater public. Several undergraduate students will be involved at any given time throughout the project. These students will have the opportunity to become members of an active research laboratory where they will be exposed to many different techniques andcross-disciplinary training. Also, various forms of outreach and public education, ranging from a web-page in lay language to the design of a museum exhibit will be pursued. Interest of the public already has been expressed after initial publication on those eyes in Science, which lead to articles in National Geographic, Time Magazine, New York Times, Scientific American, Discovery, and others.