John J. Socha, jjsocha@midway.uchicago.edu1, Kamel Fezzaa, fezzaa@aps.anl.gov1, Wah-Keat Lee, wklee@aps.anl.gov1, and Mark W. Westneat, mwestneat@fieldmuseum.org2. (1) Argonne National Laboratory, X-ray Imaging Group, 9700 S. Cass Ave, Bldg 431, Sector 1, Argonne, IL, (2) Field Museum of Natural History, Fishes Division, 1400 S. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL
In recent years a collaborative group of biologists and physicists have been using synchroton x-rays at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory to peer inside small animals while they are alive. The major advance of this technique is that it is now easy to visualize internal motions, physiological processes, and anatomy of very small animals, particularly arthropods and other invertebrates. The achievable spatial resolution of this technique is about 1 micron, which allows for real-time video and still tomography at a resolution far finer than other imaging techniques. In this talk, we'll both give a broad overview of questions we're addressing using synchrotron x-rays and we’ll show sample internal imagery from multiple insect taxa, with the hope that entomologists will be inspired to add this new technique to their scientific toolbox.
Species 1: Coleoptera Carabidae
Platynus decentis (ground beetle)
Species 2: Hymenoptera Formicidae
Camponotus pennsylvanicus (black carpenter ant)
Keywords: morphology, physiology