pituitary gland

The pituitary gland is an endocrine gland that secretes hormones that regulate many other glands [GO]. An endocrine gland located ventral to the diencephalon and derived from mixed neuroectodermal and non neuroectodermal origin [ZFIN]. Every claim on this page comes from the Leumas anatomy graph and carries its source.

What the pituitary gland is

The pituitary gland is an endocrine gland that secretes hormones that regulate many other glands [GO]. An endocrine gland located ventral to the diencephalon and derived from mixed neuroectodermal and non neuroectodermal origin [ZFIN]. The atlas records it as a gland at the organ scale in the human body.

Where the pituitary gland is

It sits within the nervous, endocrine and reproductive systems. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What the pituitary gland connects to

The atlas records 17 typed relationships for it, across 7 kinds of connection. part of diencephalon.

Supply and innervation

Arterial supply: inferior hypophysial artery and superior hypophysial artery. Venous drainage: hypophyseal vein.

Also called

Also recorded as Hp, glandula pituitaria, pituitary, pituitary body, hypophysis and hypophysis cerebri. Searching any of those names reaches this page.

Source

Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology (Mungall et al.), CC BY 4.0. Term UBERON:0000007, version 2026-06-19, retrieved 2026-08-24. Licence: CC-BY-4.0.

• Part of: diencephalon.
• A kind of: anatomical structure, endocrine gland, gland, reproductive gland and reproductive organ.
• contains: adenohypophysis, neurohypophysis and hypophyseal vein.
• contributes to morphology of: diencephalon, adenohypophysis and pars intermedia of adenohypophysis.
• Develops from: body proper and head.
• Supplied by: inferior hypophysial artery and superior hypophysial artery.
• Drained by: hypophyseal vein.

Questions

Where is the pituitary gland?

It sits within the nervous, endocrine and reproductive systems. Positioned deliberately as part of this species body plan.

What does the pituitary gland connect to?

Part of: diencephalon.

Is the pituitary gland the same in other species?

Leumas holds the same relationship vocabulary for every species it carries, so where another dataset records this structure you can put the two side by side on /compare.