ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2011
Parasitoidism, not sociality, is associated with the evolution of elaborate mushroom bodies in the brains of hymenopteran insects.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 60 papers.
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60 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Analysis of Dendritic Specializations in Two Classes of Kenyon Cells in the Mushroom Body of the Adult Honeybee, Apis mellifera.The Journal of comparative neurology · 2026Article
- Cambrian Artiopoda Reveals a Constraint in Euarthropod Brain Evolution.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The diversity of lepidopteran spatial orientation strategies - neuronal mechanisms and emerging challenges in a changing world.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Review
- Analysis of molecular and cellular bases of honey bee mushroom body development.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Sexual dimorphism and morphological integration in the orchid bee brain.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The brain atlas of a subsocial bee reflects that of eusocial Hymenoptera.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2024Article
- Insights from the past: the work of Hans von Alten on the evolution of brain structure, ecological adaptation, and cognition in hymenopteran species.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2024Review
- Unique spatially and temporary-regulated/sex-specific expression of a long ncRNA, Nb-1, suggesting its pleiotropic functions associated with honey bee lifecycle.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Article
- Corticosterone Contributes to Diet-Induced Reprogramming of Post-Metamorphic Behavior in Spadefoot Toads.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- Evidence for a selective link between cooperation and individual recognition.Current biology : CB · 2023Article
- Rapid expansion and visual specialisation of learning and memory centres in the brains of Heliconiini butterflies.Nature communications · 2023Article
- The role of learning-walk related multisensory experience in rewiring visual circuits in the desert ant brain.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2023Review
- Evolutionary dynamics of mushroom body Kenyon cell types in hymenopteran brains from multifunctional type to functionally specialized types.Science advances · 2023Article
- A modified method to analyse cell proliferation using EdU labelling in large insect brains.PloS one · 2023Article
- Mblk-1/E93, an ecdysone related-transcription factor, targets synaptic plasticity-related genes in the honey bee mushroom bodies.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Social Brain Energetics: Ergonomic Efficiency, Neurometabolic Scaling, and Metabolic Polyphenism in Ants.Integrative and comparative biology · 2022Article
- Article
- Pollen feeding inProceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
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Abstract
The social brain hypothesis posits that the cognitive demands of social behaviour have driven evolutionary expansions in brain size in some vertebrate lineages. In insects, higher brain centres called mushroom bodies are enlarged and morphologically elaborate (having doubled, invaginated and subcompartmentalized calyces that receive visual input) in social species such as the ants, bees and wasps of the aculeate Hymenoptera, suggesting that the social brain hypothesis may also apply to invertebrate animals. In a quantitative and qualitative survey of mushroom body morphology across the Hymenoptera, we demonstrate that large, elaborate mushroom bodies arose concurrent with the acquisition of a parasitoid mode of life at the base of the Euhymenopteran (Orussioidea + Apocrita) lineage, approximately 90 Myr before the evolution of sociality in the Aculeata. Thus, sociality could not have driven mushroom body elaboration in the Hymenoptera. Rather, we propose that the cognitive demands of host-finding behaviour in parasitoids, particularly the capacity for associative and spatial learning, drove the acquisition of this evolutionarily novel mushroom body architecture. These neurobehavioural modifications may have served as pre-adaptations for central place foraging, a spatial learning-intensive behaviour that is widespread across the Aculeata and may have contributed to the multiple acquisitions of sociality in this taxon.
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