ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2014
Investment in higher order central processing regions is not constrained by brain size in social insects.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Why The Polyvagal Theory Is Untenable: An international expert evaluation of the polyvagal theory and commentary upon Porges, S.W. (2025). Polyvagal theory: current status, clinical applications, and future directions. Clin. Neuropsychiatry, 22(3), 169-184.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2026Article
- Brain energy metabolism as an underlying basis of slow and fast cognitive phenotypes in honeybees.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- AnimalTraits - a curated animal trait database for body mass, metabolic rate and brain size.Scientific data · 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
- AInsects · 2021Review
- Brain evolution in social insects: advocating for the comparative approach.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2019Review
- Subtle changes in the landmark panorama disrupt visual navigation in a nocturnal bull ant.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Social isolation and brain development in the ant Camponotus floridanus.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2016Article
- Lifespan behavioural and neural resilience in a social insect.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The extent to which size constrains the evolution of brain organization and the genesis of complex behaviour is a central, unanswered question in evolutionary neuroscience. Advanced cognition has long been linked to the expansion of specific brain compartments, such as the neocortex in vertebrates and the mushroom bodies in insects. Scaling constraints that limit the size of these brain regions in small animals may therefore be particularly significant to behavioural evolution. Recent findings from studies of paper wasps suggest miniaturization constrains the size of central sensory processing brain centres (mushroom body calyces) in favour of peripheral, sensory input centres (antennal and optic lobes). We tested the generality of this hypothesis in diverse eusocial hymenopteran species (ants, bees and wasps) exhibiting striking variation in body size and thus brain size. Combining multiple neuroanatomical datasets from these three taxa, we found no universal size constraint on brain organization within or among species. In fact, small-bodied ants with miniscule brains had mushroom body calyces proportionally as large as or larger than those of wasps and bees with brains orders of magnitude larger. Our comparative analyses suggest that brain organization in ants is shaped more by natural selection imposed by visual demands than intrinsic design limitations.
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Registered trials
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.