Spider Brains (BioE80 Spr2015)

Applause IconMay 24, 2015 • 4:11 PM UTC
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gidwaniv

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As we screwed tight the last nuts and bolts of the lighting module on our brand new rig, we pondered the many ways in which we could harness its tremendous powers of magnification. Inspired by the upcoming superhero movie Ant-Man , we figured it would an exciting adventure explore life at the insect size. After trying to chase down some ants that proved to be too evasive, we found a spider that was willing to give us a look into its brain. We were hoping to gain insight into how spiders’ brains are organized. Are they symmetric? How big are they? How is neuronal density distributed? To which part is the most blood delivered? Initially, we saw that there are two segments to a spider and looked more closely at the front segment where we figured the brain would be. We found that the brain looked fairly symmetric, with some small differences. There is a dark part in the middle that likely indicates high neuronal density and high vascularization at an important part of the front segment. Given that most of the legs, the mandibles, and the eyes are all supported by this front segment, it makes sense that the majority of the neurons would be concentrated in a small portion of it. From these observations, we found it most interesting that spiders also have brains that grow radially outward and are located very centrally – it seems as though this organization has been conserved through much of the animal kingdom.
Vickram Gidwani, Urvi Gupta

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