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Neuro-eutely in tardigrades

Determine whether tardigrades exhibit neuro-eutely—an invariant, precisely specified total number of neurons during development—as observed in Caenorhabditis elegans, and assess how this property might vary across life stages or under stress.

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Background

In C. elegans, neuro-eutely underpins reproducible neuron identification and connectomics. The paper highlights that whether tardigrades share this property is a salient unknown.

Establishing neuro-eutely would guide atlas construction, neuron naming schemes, and cross-animal registration for imaging and connectomic studies.

References

A salient unknown in tardigrades is the question of neuro-eutely-whether the total number of neurons is precisely specified in development, as it is in C. elegans (Sulston and Horvitz, 1977).

— The tardigrade as an emerging model organism for systems neuroscience (2501.06606 - Lyons et al., 11 Jan 2025) in Section II. Neuroanatomy: mapping the tardigrade nervous system