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An Approach to Observing and Quantifying Real-Time Mandibular Muscle Topology in the Trap-Jaw Ant Odontomachus monticola by Synchrotron Imaging

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Abstract

The ant Odontomachus monticola has a pair of elongated mandibles that can manipulate a variety of objects including food, brood and nestmates. Anatomical and theoretical studies indicate that different tasks may require modification of mandible speed and force which is achieved by modulating the respective activity of three sets of muscles. Despite the advanced investigations on how muscles separately control the mandible movements in trap-jaw ants, real-time visualization of the muscle activity has remained elusive. In this investigation, we developed an approach based on the synchrotron imaging technique to elucidate the real-time topology of the muscles in the head of the ant. Using synchrotron imaging, we described the topology of the living ant’s mandible muscles and calculated area changes in the intracranial muscles, which reflected the respective muscle’s activities in the strike of mandibles. This study provides the first visualization evidence which validates that the mandible strike is facilitated by the contraction of adductor muscles, without the activation of abductor muscles.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the research grant of Sun Yat-Sen University for Bairen Plan (grant no. 76200-18841223), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 51905556). We appreciated the X-ray Imaging and Biomedical Application Beamline (BL13W1) of Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) for their assistance with the experiment of Synchrotron X-ray imaging.

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  1. Zixin Wang and Wei Zhang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and Technology, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, 100083, People’s Republic of China

    Zixin Wang & Yunqiang Yang

  2. School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510006, People’s Republic of China

    Wei Zhang & Jianing Wu

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  1. Zixin Wang
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  2. Wei Zhang
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  3. Jianing Wu
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  4. Yunqiang Yang
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Correspondence to Yunqiang Yang.

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Movie S1

High-Speed video of mandibles fast movements, filmed at 5 × 104frames per second (fps) and played at 30 fps. (MP4 2227 kb)

Movie S2

Muscle observation under the synchrotron imaging. (MP4 20,159 kb)

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(DOCX 758 kb)

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Wang, Z., Zhang, W., Wu, J. et al. An Approach to Observing and Quantifying Real-Time Mandibular Muscle Topology in the Trap-Jaw Ant Odontomachus monticola by Synchrotron Imaging. J Insect Behav 33, 174–183 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-020-09759-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-020-09759-5

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