A projectome of the bumblebee central complex

  1. Marcel Ethan Sayre  Is a corresponding author
  2. Rachel Templin
  3. Johanna Chavez
  4. Julian Kempenaers
  5. Stanley Heinze  Is a corresponding author
  1. Lund University, Sweden
  2. University of Queensland, Australia

Abstract

Insects have evolved diverse and remarkable strategies for navigating in various ecologies all over the world. Regardless of species, insects share the presence of a group of morphologically conserved neuropils known collectively as the central complex (CX). The CX is a navigational center, involved in sensory integration and coordinated motor activity. Despite the fact that our understanding of navigational behavior comes predominantly from ants and bees, most of what we know about the underlying neural circuitry of such behavior comes from work in fruit flies. Here we aim to close this gap, by providing the first comprehensive map of all major columnar neurons and their projection patterns in the CX of a bee. We find numerous components of the circuit that appear to be highly conserved between the fly and the bee, but also highlight several key differences which are likely to have important functional rami1cations.

Data availability

Neuron morphologies presented in this paper have been deposited as interactive datasets in the InsectBrainDatabase with accession numbers EIN-0000061 (126nm data) and EIN-0000062 (24nm data). These are available for interactive viewing as well as download.

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Marcel Ethan Sayre

    Vision Group, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
    For correspondence
    marcel.sayre@biol.lu.se
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Rachel Templin

    Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Johanna Chavez

    Department of Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Julian Kempenaers

    Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0059-1045
  5. Stanley Heinze

    Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
    For correspondence
    stanley.heinze@biol.lu.se
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8145-3348

Funding

H2020 European Research Council (714599)

  • Stanley Heinze

Swedish Research Council (2018-04851 and 621-2012-2213)

  • Stanley Heinze

Australian Research Council

  • Rachel Templin

Australian Research Foundation

  • Rachel Templin

Air Force Office for Scientific Research

  • Rachel Templin

International Cotutelle Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship (iMQRES 2019060)

  • Marcel Ethan Sayre

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Albert Cardona, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Version history

  1. Preprint posted: March 29, 2021 (view preprint)
  2. Received: March 30, 2021
  3. Accepted: September 14, 2021
  4. Accepted Manuscript published: September 15, 2021 (version 1)
  5. Version of Record published: October 11, 2021 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2021, Sayre et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Marcel Ethan Sayre
  2. Rachel Templin
  3. Johanna Chavez
  4. Julian Kempenaers
  5. Stanley Heinze
(2021)
A projectome of the bumblebee central complex
eLife 10:e68911.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68911

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https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.68911