The German Research Foundation, known as the DFG, is supporting the venture with approximately 1.8 million euros over six years. The Emmy Noether Program is one of the most prestigious funding instruments available to early-career researchers in Germany, designed to allow outstanding scientists to build their own independent research groups and qualify for a university teaching career. For Farnworth, the award provides not only financial security but also the freedom to assemble a dedicated team and pursue a long-term scientific vision without the constraints that often accompany more narrowly defined project grants.

Farnworth arrived in Mainz on August 1, 2026, and his group is based at the Institute of Developmental Biology and Neurobiology, where he works in close proximity to the Neural Circuits Lab. The group is additionally affiliated with the Focus Program Translational Neurosciences and the Institute of Pathophysiology, giving it access to a broad network of neuroscientific expertise. The team he is assembling will consist of one postdoctoral researcher, two doctoral researchers, and a part-time technical assistant, a configuration typical of an Emmy Noether group and large enough to combine genetic experimentation, single-cell molecular analysis, and advanced imaging within a single laboratory.

The central question driving the new group is deceptively simple: why are some neural circuits far more evolutionarily flexible than others? Within a single brain, neighboring structures can follow dramatically different evolutionary trajectories. One region may be extensively remodeled across lineages, with new cell types appearing, cell numbers expanding or contracting, and connectivity patterns shifting, while another region remains essentially unchanged over vast stretches of evolutionary time. Understanding what makes a neural circuit conservative or permissive to change would illuminate a fundamental principle of how brains evolve, with implications reaching far beyond insects.

To tackle this question, Farnworth focuses on two well-characterized regions of the insect brain. The first is the mushroom bodies, paired structures best known for their roles in learning and memory, particularly in the context of olfactory association. The second is the central complex, a midline-spanning network of neuropils that serves as the insect’s navigation and orientation hub, integrating sensory information to control walking, turning, and spatial orientation. Over the course of insect evolution, these two regions have diverged sharply in their histories. Mushroom bodies have been extensively remodeled in different groups of insects, reflecting adaptations to widely varying lifestyles, whereas the central complex has remained comparatively conserved, preserving a recognizable ground plan across lineages.

Farnworth’s hypothesis is that the answer to this contrast may lie in development. During the development of an insect, many thousands of nerve cells and millions of connections arise from a comparatively small number of neural stem cells. Specific developmental programs determine which cell types are formed, how many cells of each type are produced, and which connections they establish with one another. We want to understand how these programs change over the course of evolution and how these changes allow neural circuits to adapt to different lifestyles and environmental conditions, Farnworth explains. If the developmental programs governing the mushroom bodies are inherently more modular or more tolerant of variation than those governing the central complex, that could explain why one structure has been free to diversify while the other has been locked in place.

Testing this idea requires a comparative framework, and the group has selected four insect species that together span a wide swath of the insect evolutionary tree: the common fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum, the clonal raider ant Ooceraea biroi, and the Indianmeal moth Plodia interpunctella. Each species represents a distinct lineage, and each brings a different lifestyle to the comparison. The fruit fly is the canonical genetic model with a compact brain; the beetle represents holometabolous insects with a different larval development; the clonal raider ant offers a social species in which brain regions involved in learning and communication have adapted to colony life; and the moth adds a lineage with sophisticated olfactory-driven behaviors. By comparing homologous brain structures across these species, the researchers can distinguish features that have been conserved from those that have changed.

Methodologically, the project combines single-cell analyses, genetic tools, and high-resolution imaging. Single-cell approaches allow the team to catalog which cell types are present in each brain region of each species, effectively producing molecular census lists that can be compared across lineages. Genetic methods make it possible to trace the lineages of neural stem cells and to manipulate developmental programs experimentally, revealing how changes in stem cell behavior translate into changes in adult circuitry. High-resolution imaging, meanwhile, documents the anatomy of the resulting circuits, from the positions of cell bodies to the fine structure of the connections they form. Together, these techniques allow the researchers to determine which components of neural circuits have been conserved over evolutionary time and where changes have occurred in cell types, cell numbers, or connectivity.

The work exemplifies an approach often described as neuro-evo-devo, the intersection of neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and developmental biology. Rather than studying a single model organism in isolation, this framework treats development as the mechanism through which evolutionary change is enacted. Mutations do not reshape adult brains directly; they alter developmental programs, and it is these altered programs that produce different cell types, different cell numbers, and different wiring patterns in the next generation. By reading the developmental programs of multiple species and comparing their outputs, researchers can reconstruct how evolutionary transformations in the brain actually happened, and potentially predict which kinds of changes are easy for evolution to make and which are difficult.

For Farnworth, the move to Mainz represents the culmination of a research trajectory that has taken him through several of Europe’s leading institutions. He has been studying the evolution and development of the insect brain since his doctoral research. At the University of Göttingen, he investigated the development of the central complex in fruit flies and red flour beetles, gaining firsthand experience with the comparative approach that now anchors his independent program. Most recently, at the University of Bristol, he studied the evolution of neural circuits in butterflies, extending his comparisons to a lineage in which visual and cognitive adaptations are especially pronounced. JGU provides an excellent research environment for my neuro-evo-devo approach, which seeks to understand brain evolution through its development, Farnworth says. This combination of strong developmental and evolutionary biology is rare. JGU also offers excellent core facilities, particularly in imaging. With the Emmy Noether funding now secured and the group taking shape in Mainz, the coming six years promise to shed new light on one of neuroscience’s deepest questions: how the tiny brains of insects are built, and why evolution has rewritten some parts of their blueprint while leaving others untouched for hundreds of millions of years.

Subject of Research: Evolution and development of neural circuits in the insect brain

Article Title: Evolutionary neurobiologist Max Farnworth joins JGU from Bristol with Emmy Noether Funding

Article References: Evolutionary neurobiologist Max Farnworth joins JGU from Bristol with Emmy Noether Funding. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: neuroscience, evolutionary biology, developmental biology, insect brain, Emmy Noether Program, DFG, mushroom bodies, central complex, neural circuits, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, single-cell analysis, neuro-evo-devo