ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2016
Social complexity influences brain investment and neural operation costs in ants.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 53 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evolution of neurometabolic frugality in harvester ants.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2026Article
- Transcriptomic and Proteomic Analyses of the Liver and Ileum Identify Key Genes and Pathways Associated with Low and High Groups of Social Genetic Effect of Residual Feed Intake.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Brain energy metabolism as an underlying basis of slow and fast cognitive phenotypes in honeybees.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- White Paper: An Integrated Perspective on the Causes of Hypometric Metabolic Scaling in Animals.Integrative and comparative biology · 2022Article
- AnimalTraits - a curated animal trait database for body mass, metabolic rate and brain size.Scientific data · 2022Article
- Social Brain Energetics: Ergonomic Efficiency, Neurometabolic Scaling, and Metabolic Polyphenism in Ants.Integrative and comparative biology · 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
- Nesting ecology does not explain slow-fast cognitive differences among honeybee species.Animal cognition · 2021Article
- Jumping spiders: An exceptional group for comparative cognition studies.Learning & behavior · 2021Review
- Allometric analysis of brain cell number in Hymenoptera suggests ant brains diverge from general trends.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Eusociality and Senescence: Neuroprotection and Physiological Resilience to Aging in Insect and Mammalian Systems.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2021Review
- Brain Size, Metabolism, and Social Evolution.Frontiers in physiology · 2021Article
- 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
- Social complexity influences brain investment and neural operation costs in ants.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The metabolic expense of producing and operating neural tissue required for adaptive behaviour is considered a significant selective force in brain evolution. In primates, brain size correlates positively with group size, presumably owing to the greater cognitive demands of complex social relationships in large societies. Social complexity in eusocial insects is also associated with large groups, as well as collective intelligence and division of labour among sterile workers. However, superorganism phenotypes may lower cognitive demands on behaviourally specialized workers resulting in selection for decreased brain size and/or energetic costs of brain metabolism. To test this hypothesis, we compared brain investment patterns and cytochrome oxidase (COX) activity, a proxy for ATP usage, in two ant species contrasting in social organization. Socially complex Oecophylla smaragdina workers had larger brain size and relative investment in the mushroom bodies (MBs)-higher order sensory processing compartments-than the more socially basic Formica subsericea workers. Oecophylla smaragdina workers, however, had reduced COX activity in the MBs. Our results suggest that as in primates, ant group size is associated with large brain size. The elevated costs of investment in metabolically expensive brain tissue in the socially complex O. smaragdina, however, appear to be offset by decreased energetic costs.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.