Organism
Caenorhabditis elegans
TL;DR
A nematode worm with exactly 302 neurons whose complete connectome (neural wiring diagram) was first mapped in 1986 after a 15-year effort.
A nematode worm with exactly 302 neurons whose complete connectome (neural wiring diagram) was first mapped in 1986 after a 15-year effort. C. elegans is the foundational model organism for studying small-world network properties in neural systems, revealing high clustering coefficient (~0.3-0.5) and short characteristic path lengths that became the template for understanding network topology across biological and social systems.
Notable Traits of Caenorhabditis elegans
- First organism with fully mapped connectome
- 302 neurons with ~7,000 synaptic connections
- Model organism for neural network topology studies