Abstract
The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is an established and powerful model system for neuroscience research with wide relevance in biology and medicine. Until recently, research on the Drosophila brain was hindered by the lack of a complete and uniform nomenclature. Recognising this problem, the Insect Brain Name Working Group produced an authoritative hierarchical nomenclature system for the adult insect brain, using Drosophila melanogaster as the reference framework, with other taxa considered to ensure greater consistency and expandability (Ito et al., 2014). Here, we extend this nomenclature system to the sub-gnathal regions of the adult Drosophila nervous system, thus providing a systematic anatomical description of the ventral nervous system (VNS). This portion of the nervous system includes the thoracic and abdominal neuromeres that were not included in the original work and contains the motor circuits that play essential roles in most fly behaviours.
Highlights
Insects, and Drosophila melanogaster in particular, have made significant contributions to neuroscience research (Bellen et al, 2010)
Median Dorsal Abdominal Tract (MDT) MDT is the dorsal-most tract in the ventral nervous system (VNS), sits close to midline (Merritt and Murphey, 1992) and runs dorsally along the length of the tectulum (Boerner and Duch, 2010) past the haltere chiasma to terminate into the abdominal neuromeres (Power, 1948). It is the medial-most of the three small dorsal tracts which connects the thoracic and abdominal neuromeres (Figure 5). With this nomenclature we address two primary issues required to create a clearer understanding of the VNS structure and to promote dialogue and data exchange amongst neuroscience researchers
The detailed VNS map we provide is essential for integrating past and future work into a common space, thereby contributing to new lines of investigation
Summary
Drosophila melanogaster in particular, have made significant contributions to neuroscience research (Bellen et al, 2010). Systems by which anatomical data gathered by different researchers may be registered on a common anatomical framework to provide a coarse understanding of connectivity are available (Ostrovsky et al, 2013) Such methods rely on a systematic and consistent nomenclature that defines precisely the anatomical structures and their boundaries. Once this is complete it forms a coherent framework upon which information may be efficiently added, corrected, and extracted allowing new research findings to be added to the growing knowledgebase Recognising this problem, a consortium of neurobiologists studying arthropod brains (the insect brain name working group (IBNWG), was established and produced a comprehensive hierarchical nomenclature system for the insect brain, using Drosophila melanogaster as the reference framework (Ito et al, 2014). We propose a comprehensive and consistent nomenclature that will serve as a foundation for future work
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