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: The shape of a neuron, its morphological signature, dictates the neuron's function by establishing its synaptic partnerships. Here, we review various anatomical methods used to reveal neuron shape and the contributions these have made to our current understanding of neural function in the Drosophila brain, especially the optic lobe. These methods, including Golgi impregnation, genetic reporters, and electron microscopy (EM), necessarily incorporate biases of various sorts that are easy to overlook, but that filter the morphological signatures we see. Nonetheless, the application of these methods to the optic lobe has led to reassuringly congruent findings on the number and shapes of neurons and their connection patterns, indicating that morphological classes are actually genetic classes. Genetic methods using, especially, GAL4 drivers and associated reporters have largely superceded classical Golgi methods …