Rete Ovarii
Rete Ovarii
Noun (anatomy)
Pronunciation
REE-tee oh-VAIR-ee-eye
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)
/ˈriː.ti oʊˈvɛə.ri.aɪ/
Lexicographic Status
Historical anatomical term, recently rediscovered in reproductive biology research and now trending across TikTok and Instagram as women learn about a part of their anatomy most were never taught existed.
Definition
The rete ovarii is a small network of tubes that sits alongside the ovary. For more than a century it was dismissed as a leftover structure from fetal development with no real job in the adult body.
New research suggests otherwise. Scientists have found that the rete ovarii has three distinct regions, is surrounded by blood vessels and nerve fibres, and appears to move protein-rich fluid toward the ovary. Some of the proteins it releases are linked to egg maturation and follicle health, and their activity appears to rise alongside estrogen.
In other words, a structure long written off as useless may be quietly supporting the ovary and responding to the hormonal cycle. Researchers are careful to call its role in fertility a hypothesis for now, and the work so far has been done in mice.
Origin of the Term
The name comes from Latin: rete means "net" and ovarii means "of the ovary," describing the net-like tangle of tubes near the ovary.
The structure was described more than a hundred years ago and even appeared in drawings of the ovary in early editions of Gray's Anatomy. Over time it disappeared from modern textbooks entirely, and generations of students, doctors, and women grew up never hearing its name.
Cultural Context
The rete ovarii re-entered public conversation through the work of Dr. Dilara Anbarci, a reproductive biologist who completed her PhD at Duke University and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan.
As first author on a 2025 study published in eLife, she and her colleagues used 3D imaging and protein analysis to map the rete ovarii in unprecedented detail. When she began explaining the research on social media, her videos reached hundreds of thousands of viewers, many of them women asking the same question: why were we never taught this?
That question is the heart of why the rete ovarii resonates. A structure sitting right beside the ovary was treated as meaningless for decades, which says a great deal about how women's bodies have been studied. As Dr. Anbarci told Science News, there is still so much we can't even begin to comprehend about female anatomy.
It's also why Oxley exists. We believe women deserve to explore their bodies, desires, and curiosities without shame or judgment, and that belief shapes every one of our design principles.
Examples in Research
Key studies on the rete ovarii include:
Rediscovering the rete ovarii, a secreting auxiliary structure to the ovary (eLife, 2025), which identified the structure's three regions and its fluid-secreting activity; and Bulk and single-cell transcriptome datasets of the mouse fetal and adult rete ovarii (Scientific Data, 2024), which found genes switching on when estrogen was at its highest.
Together, these papers reframe the rete ovarii from a forgotten remnant into an active, hormone-responsive structure that may play a role in ovarian health.
Related Terms
Ovary
Ovarian Follicle
Estrogen
Fertility
Reproductive Anatomy
Rete Testis
Sources
eLife (Anbarci et al., 2025)
Revisiting the rete ovarii (PMC)
Science News
PubMed
Dr. Dilara Anbarci (@somethingaboutdilara)
Related Terms in The Women's Archive
Gaslighting
Emotional Labour
The Oxley Presents: The Women's Archive
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