Award ceremony of the Japan Society of Evolutionary Studies

Brain slices of older tissues prepared with ice-cold (blue) and warm (red) preparation methods, as demonstrated by Shiwei Huang and Marylka Yoe Uusisaari in a paper in Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience. The asterisks (*) indicate visible neurons. While no healthy neurons are visible in the left image, seven are visible in the right. Abbreviations: PN, Purkinje neuron layer; ML, molecular layer; GrC, granular cell layer.

Professor Evan Economo and researchers in the Biodiversity and Biocomplexity Unit compared genetic sequences from hundreds species of Pheidole, a group of ants with mysteriously high diversity. They used these sequences to construct a Pheidole evolutionary tree that suggests Pheidole evolved the same way twice, to take over the New World and then the Old World.

X-ray micro-CT

Burriel-Ha’s 3D model of the ant head and first segment next to the 3D image on the computer used to print it.

Dr. Yuuri Yasuoka