Automated measurement of ommatidia in the compound eyes of beetles

BioTechniques

Bartosz W. Schramm¹  Marcin Czarnoleski¹  Jan Kozłowski¹  Agnieszka Gudowska¹  Filip Kapustka¹  Anna Maria Labecka¹ 

[1] 1Institute of Environmental Sciences, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland;

关键词: ommatidia size;    automated measurement;    ImageJ;    Carabidae beetles;    nail polish imprint;    compound eye;   

DOI  :  10.2144/000114316

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The size of the ommatidia that compose the insect compound eye is linked to visual capacity, physiological performance, and cell size. Therefore, rapid and reliable methods for measuring ommatidia can advance research on insect ecology and evolution. We developed an automated method to measure ommatidia in nail polish imprints of the eyes of three Carabidae beetle species using the widely available, free software ImageJ. Our automated method was equivalent to a traditional manual method in terms of accuracy but had the advantage of being 70 times faster. We provide access to our algorithm, which can be used to investigate biological phenomena ranging from the functional architecture of the compound eye to the cellular basis of the evolution of body size and metabolic rates.

【 授权许可】

Unknown