The chemical sense of marine isopod crustaceans

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Our current knowledge on both the morphology of the crustacean olfactory pathway and on chemically guided behavior is heavily biased towards members of the Decapoda. In the current project, we want to gain more insights into olfaction in another major group of malacostracan crustaceans, the marine Isopoda by analysing the architecture of the peripheral and central olfactory pathway and by conducting behavioral essays. To that end we propose here to analyze, in a wide range of isopods, the morphology of the antennae and the central olfactory pathway with neuroanatomical methods such as scanning electron microscopy, serial semithin sectioning combined with 3D reconstruction, antennal backfilling with neuronal tracers, focal application of dextrans to label populations of olfactory interneurons, and immuno-fluorescence combined with confocal laser-scan microscopy. We will try to analyse representatives from a wide range of different habitats including the deep sea, the Arctic and Antartica, the Tropics, and from different life styles including scavengers and parasitic species. Furthermore, olfactory-guided beha-vior and navigation strategies to odor sources will be tested in behavioral assays using the omnivorous isopod Saduria entomon which is common in the Baltic as a model. In a neurophylogenetic approach, our data will be compared to the morphology of the olfactory systems in other malacostracan crustaceans and hexapods in order to extract data for understanding the evolution of arthropod olfactory systems in general.