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

新型昆虫视觉系统的功能组织和进化。

• 批准号: 0423963
• 负责人: Elke Buschbeck
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Cincinnati Main Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-11-25 至 2007-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0423963&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Functional; Organization; Evolution; Novel; Insect

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.

lay Abstracthoy（0211770）的功能组织和新型昆虫视觉系统的演变。昆虫的眼睛（称为复合眼睛）通常由数千个微小的透镜构成，每个透镜都捕获了空间中的单个图像点。 复合眼是按照蓝图的蓝图进行组织的，该蓝图在整个昆虫，甚至大多数甲壳类动物（虾，螃蟹等）上都保守。 令人惊讶的是，扭曲的昆虫（链球菌）并不遵循此蓝图，而是具有代表形成镜头眼睛的图像的中间形式的眼睛，例如在脊椎动物中发现的镜头和典型的昆虫眼。 在这个高度专业化的寄生昆虫群中，几种大镜头各自捕获一个小图像或视觉环境的“块”。 这些基于镜头的构建块一起形成了一只小眼睛，可以采样广泛的视野。 该项目着重于这种独特的眼睛的功能组织。 这个中级组织逃脱了复合眼和单镜头眼的一些经典局限性。 对链球菌眼类型的更深入的了解可能有助于生物仿生的不断增长的领域，在这种情况下，它可能导致针对采样广泛视野的小型传感器的新技术。 该项目的大部分将致力于研究整合单个镜头提供的部分图像的神经底物。 在链球菌中，来自相邻孔眼的视觉信息必须集成到一个大型连贯图像中。 了解执行此类整合的设计可能会揭示视觉研究中的新神经机制。 由于这种眼睛与所有其他昆虫的眼睛截然不同，因此我们还将研究其发育的特定方面，并使用比较方法来研究其进化起源。 在两个主要方面，该项目将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，发展和演变，这些结构有趣，因为它适应了特定的生活方式，并且可能有可能成为未来技术的基础，并且（2）它将在培训学生和更大的公众方面提供相当大的教育益处。 整个项目的任何给定时间都将参与几个本科生。 这些学生将有机会成为活跃的研究实验室的成员，在那里他们将接受许多不同的技术和跨学科培训。 此外，还将追求各种形式的外展和公共教育，从外行语言到博物馆的设计。 公众的兴趣已经在有关科学的那些眼睛的首次出版后已经表达出来，这导致了《国家地理》，《时代》杂志，纽约时报，科学美国人，发现等文章。