ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015
Distributed cognition and social brains: reductions in mushroom body investment accompanied the origins of sociality in wasps (Hymenoptera: Vespidae).
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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25 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evolution of neurometabolic frugality in harvester ants.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2026Article
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- Linking individual fitness to the evolution of cognition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Comparing microCT Staining and Scanning Methodology for Brain Studies in Various Sizes of Spiders.The Journal of comparative neurology · 2025Article
- The brain atlas of a subsocial bee reflects that of eusocial Hymenoptera.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2024Article
- Chemical and transcriptomic diversity do not correlate with ascending levels of social complexity in the insect order Blattodea.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- A multi-scale review of the dynamics of collective behaviour: from rapid responses to ontogeny and evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Cellular Competency during Development Alters Evolutionary Dynamics in an Artificial Embryogeny Model.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- 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
- 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
- Article
- Shrunken Social Brains? A Minimal Model of the Role of Social Interaction in Neural Complexity.Frontiers in neurorobotics · 2021Article
- Constant neuropilar ratio in the insect brain.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Body Size and Its Relation to the Foraging Schedules of Social Wasps.Neotropical entomology · 2020Article
- Feeding specialization and longer generation time are associated with relatively larger brains in bees.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Brain structure differences between solitary and social wasp species are independent of body size allometry.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2019Article
- Brain evolution in social insects: advocating for the comparative approach.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2019Review
- Division of labor and brain evolution in insect societies: Neurobiology of extreme specialization in the turtle ant Cephalotes varians.PloS one · 2019Article
- Sociality does not drive the evolution of large brains in eusocial African mole-rats.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Sensory and cognitive adaptations to social living in insect societies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
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6 authors.
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Abstract
The social brain hypothesis assumes the evolution of social behaviour changes animals' ecological environments, and predicts evolutionary shifts in social structure will be associated with changes in brain investment. Most social brain models to date assume social behaviour imposes additional cognitive challenges to animals, favouring the evolution of increased brain investment. Here, we present a modification of social brain models, which we term the distributed cognition hypothesis. Distributed cognition models assume group members can rely on social communication instead of individual cognition; these models predict reduced brain investment in social species. To test this hypothesis, we compared brain investment among 29 species of wasps (Vespidae family), including solitary species and social species with a wide range of social attributes (i.e. differences in colony size, mode of colony founding and degree of queen/worker caste differentiation). We compared species means of relative size of mushroom body (MB) calyces and the antennal to optic lobe ratio, as measures of brain investment in central processing and peripheral sensory processing, respectively. In support of distributed cognition predictions, and in contrast to patterns seen among vertebrates, MB investment decreased from solitary to social species. Among social species, differences in colony founding, colony size and caste differentiation were not associated with brain investment differences. Peripheral lobe investment did not covary with social structure. These patterns suggest the strongest changes in brain investment--a reduction in central processing brain regions--accompanied the evolutionary origins of eusociality in Vespidae.
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