ArticleFrontiers in physiology2012
An exploration of the social brain hypothesis in insects.
Article in Frontiers in physiology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers.
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Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evolution of neurometabolic frugality in harvester ants.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2026Article
- The fru gene specifies male cooperative behaviors in honeybee colonies.Nature communications · 2025Article
- The evolution of division of labour: preconditions and evolutionary feedback.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Exploring rodent prosociality: A conceptual framework.Translational neuroscience · 2025Review
- The brain atlas of a subsocial bee reflects that of eusocial Hymenoptera.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2024Article
- Dedicated developmental programing for group-supporting behaviors in eusocial honeybees.Science advances · 2024Article
- Brain size predicts bees' tolerance to urban environments.Biology letters · 2023Article
- Emergent regulation of ant foraging frequency through a computationally inexpensive forager movement rule.eLife · 2023Article
- Mechanisms of collective learning: how can animal groups improve collective performance when repeating a task?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Multisite imaging of neural activity using a genetically encoded calcium sensor in the honey bee.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- A single-cell transcriptomic atlas tracking the neural basis of division of labour in an ant superorganism.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
- Social isolation and group size are associated with divergent gene expression in the brain of ant queens.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2022Article
- Behavioral performance and division of labor influence brain mosaicism in the leafcutter ant Atta cephalotes.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2022Article
- Jumping spiders: An exceptional group for comparative cognition studies.Learning & behavior · 2021Review
- The Loss of Sociality Is Accompanied by Reduced Neural Investment in Mushroom Body Volume in the Sweat BeeAnnals of the Entomological Society of America · 2021Article
- AInsects · 2021Review
- Article
- Arthropod spatial cognition.Animal cognition · 2020Review
- The Neuroproteomic Basis of Enhanced Perception and Processing of Brood Signals That Trigger Increased Reproductive Investment in Honeybee (Molecular & cellular proteomics : MCP · 2020Article
- Social competition stimulates cognitive performance in a sex-specific manner.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
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Abstract
The "social brain hypothesis" posits that the cognitive demands of sociality have driven the evolution of substantially enlarged brains in primates and some other mammals. Whether such reasoning can apply to all social animals is an open question. Here we examine the evolutionary relationships between sociality, cognition, and brain size in insects, a taxonomic group characterized by an extreme sophistication of social behaviors and relatively simple nervous systems. We discuss the application of the social brain hypothesis in this group, based on comparative studies of brain volumes across species exhibiting various levels of social complexity. We illustrate how some of the major behavioral innovations of social insects may in fact require little information-processing and minor adjustments of neural circuitry, thus potentially selecting for more specialized rather than bigger brains. We argue that future work aiming to understand how animal behavior, cognition, and brains are shaped by the environment (including social interactions) should focus on brain functions and identify neural circuitry correlates of social tasks, not only brain sizes.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.