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

Lay摘要Hoy(0211770)介绍了一种新的昆虫视觉系统的功能组织和进化。昆虫的眼睛被称为复眼，通常由数以千计的微小透镜组成，每个透镜捕捉空间中的一个单独的图像点。复眼是按照进化上保守的蓝图组织起来的，昆虫甚至大多数甲壳类动物(虾、蟹等)都是如此。令人惊讶的是，这种扭曲的翅膀昆虫(链霉目)并不遵循这个蓝图，而是有一只眼睛，它的眼睛代表了成像透镜眼(如在脊椎动物中发现的)和典型昆虫眼之间的中间形式。在这个高度专业化、寄生的昆虫群体中，几个大镜头每个都捕捉到了视觉环境的一个小图像或“大块”。这些以镜头为基础的积木一起形成了一个小眼睛，采样了广阔的视野。本项目侧重于这一独特视角的功能组织。这种中间结构摆脱了复眼和单眼的一些经典限制。对链翅目昆虫眼睛类型的深入了解可能有助于生物仿生学领域的不断发展，这可能会导致小型传感器的新技术，这些传感器可以采样广阔的视野。这个项目的大部分内容将致力于研究神经基质，它整合了由单个镜片提供的部分图像。在Strepsimtera中，来自相邻小孔的视觉信息必须被整合到一个大的相干图像中。了解执行这种整合的设计可能会揭示视觉研究中的新神经机制。由于这只眼睛与所有其他昆虫的眼睛是如此不同，我们还将研究它的发育的具体方面，并使用比较的方法来探索它的进化起源。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、发展和演变，这些结构是适应特定生活方式的有趣的，并可能成为未来技术的基础；(2)它将在培训学生和教育更广泛的公众方面提供相当大的教育效益。在整个项目中，任何时候都会有几个本科生参与其中。这些学生将有机会成为活跃的研究实验室的成员，在那里他们将接触到许多不同的技术和跨学科培训。此外，还将开展各种形式的外展和公众教育，从用通俗语言制作网页到设计博物馆展品。公众的兴趣在《科学》杂志上首次发表后就已经表达出来了，随后在国家地理、时代杂志、纽约时报、科学美国人、探索等杂志上发表了文章。

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.