Publication Date

3-5-2026

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Nature Methods

Volume

23

Issue

3

DOI

10.1038/s41592-026-03005-0

First Page

663

Last Page

672

Abstract

The big data era in biology is underway, but the study of organismal form has been slow to capitalize on advances in imaging and computation. Imaging approaches can digitize whole organisms, but low throughput has limited the effort to document morphological diversity. Here, within the open science initiative ‘Antscan’, we applied high-throughput synchrotron X-ray microtomography to capture phenotypes across a diverse and ecologically dominant insect group: ants. At https://www.antscan.info, we provide 2,193 whole-body three-dimensional ant datasets from 212 genera and 792 species to broadly cover the ant phylogeny with a global scope, also pairing phenomic data with genome sequencing projects. Scans acquired with standardized parameters facilitate automated analysis, and free access to data can broaden the audience and incentivize methods development. Antscan presents a scalable approach to create libraries of diverse anatomies, heralding an era of studies on the evolution, structure and function of organismal phenotypes.

Funding Number

INST 35/1503-1 FUGG

Funding Sponsor

Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst Baden-Württemberg

Comments

Full author list: Julian Katzke, Francisco Hita Garcia, Philipp D. Lösel, Fumika Azuma, Tomáš Faragó, Lazzat Aibekova, Alexandre Casadei-Ferreira, Shubham Gautam, Adrian Richter, Evropi Toulkeridou, Sabine Bremer, Elias Hamann, Jenny Hein, Janes Odar, Chandan Sarkar, Marcus Zuber, Jacobus J. Boomsma, Rodrigo M. Feitosa, Lukas Schrader, Guojie Zhang, Sándor Csősz, Minsoo Dong, Olivia Evangelista, Georg Fischer, Brian L. Fisher, Jaime A. Florez-Fernandez, The Antscan GAGA Consortium, Fede García, Kiko Gómez, Donato A. Grasso, Stephane de Greef, Benoit Guénard, Peter G. Hawkes, Robert A. Johnson, Roberto A. Keller, Rasmus S. Larsen, Timothy A. Linksvayer, Cong Liu, Arthur Matte, Masako Ogasawara, Hao Ran, Juanita Rodriguez, Enrico Schifani, Ted R. Schultz, Jonathan Z. Shik, Jeffrey Sosa-Calvo, Chao Tong, Leonardo Tozetto, Seonwoo Yoon, Masashi Yoshimura, Jie Zhao, Tilo Baumbach, Evan P. Economo & Thomas van de Kamp

The Antscan GAGA Consortium: Serge Aron, Abel Bernadou, Martin Bollazzi, Raphaël Boulay, Sylvia Cremer, Heike Feldhaar, Susanne Foitzik, Erik T. Frank, Jürgen Gadau, Daniele Giannetti, Stephane de Greef, Heikki Helanterä, Ana Ješovnik, Fredrick Larabee, Bálint Markó, David Nash, Jérôme Orivel, Jes Søe Pedersen, Frédéric Petitclerc, Stephen Rehner, Morten Schiøtt, András Tartally, Kazuki Tsuji, Irene Villalta & Herbert C. Wagner

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Biological Sciences

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