Most of my life I wanted to do something with animals, though I guess I envisioned something a little bit larger than your average ant. But due to the timely invention of the microscope in the 17th century, size is not the issue it used to be. My introduction to invertebrates, however, did not happen until I started my Ph.D. thesis, though I had encountered microscopes long before, and had even been introduced to the idea that they can be used to look at bits of sectioned tissue. So I was perfectly prepared to section ant brains. As the demand in Germany for professional ant brains slicers appeared to be limited outside of Würzburg, the place of my then abode, I found that I could apply my learned skills with equal ease to the brain of wasps at Cornell University in the lab of Ron Hoy. Wasps have fascinating little brains of their own they are hopefully justly proud of. But the call of the great ant proved to be irresistible (especially combined with the promise of a much shorter winter), so I am back to looking at neuroanatomy of ants, though some bees have also been plagued by my attention. All those hymenopterans have in common, that they are blessed by large and elaborate mushroom bodies, a conspicuous brain center which is believed to be involved in learning and context dependent processes. So it is probably inevitable to end up studying the anatomy of this structure in order to achieve some hypotheses about its function (though the rest of the brain as certainly deserves attention). Current projects involve tracing visual input to the mushroom bodies from the optic neuropil in various hymenopteran insects, comparing different castes in ants and sometimes thinking about the representation of sensory input in the mushroom bodies.

 

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