Julian Katzke, Francisco Hita Garcia, 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, M. S. Zubér, Jacobus J. Boomsma, Rodrigo M. Feitosa, Lukas Schrader, Guojie Zhang, Sándor Csősz, Minsoo Dong, Olívia Evangelista, Brian L. Fisher, Brian L. Fisher, Jaime A. Florez-Fernandez, Serge Aron, Abel Bernadou, Martín Bollazzi, Raphaël Boulay, Sylvia Cremer, Heike Feldhaar, Susanne Foitzik, Erik T. Frank, Jürgen Gadau, Daniele Giannetti, Stéphane 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, Irène Villalta, Herbert C. Wagner, Fede García, Fede García, Kiko Gómez, Donató A. Grasso, Stéphane 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 Rodríguez, 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 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.