ReviewJournal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology2019
Brain evolution in social insects: advocating for the comparative approach.
Review in Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evolution of neurometabolic frugality in harvester ants.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2026Article
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- The fru gene specifies male cooperative behaviors in honeybee colonies.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Sexual dimorphism and morphological integration in the orchid bee brain.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Olfactory sensory neuron population expansions influence projection neuron adaptation and enhance odour tracking.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Evolution of neural circuitry and cognition.Biology letters · 2024Review
- Odorant Receptors Expressing and Antennal Lobes Architecture Are Linked to Caste Dimorphism in Asian Honeybee,International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Evidence for a selective link between cooperation and individual recognition.Current biology : CB · 2023Article
- 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
- 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
- Neuroanatomical differentiation associated with alternative reproductive tactics in male arid land bees, Centris pallida and Amegilla dawsoni.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2021Article
- Brain Size, Metabolism, and Social Evolution.Frontiers in physiology · 2021Article
- Fungus-Growing Ants: Models for the Integrative Analysis of Cognition and Brain Evolution.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 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
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2 authors.
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Abstract
Sociality is classified as one of the major transitions in the evolution of complexity and much effort has been dedicated to understanding what traits predispose lineages to sociality. Conversely, studies addressing the role of sociality in brain evolution (e.g., the social brain hypothesis) have not focused on particular traits and instead relied largely on measurements of relative brain composition. Hymenoptera range from solitary to advanced social species, providing enticing comparisons for studying sociality and neural trait evolution. Here we argue that measuring the role of sociality in brain evolution will benefit from attending to recent advances in neuroethology and adopting existing phylogenetic comparative methods employed in analysis of non-neural traits. Such analyses should rely on traits we expect to vary at the taxonomic level used in comparative analyses and include phylogenetic structure. We outline the limits of brain size and volumetric interpretation and advocate closer attention to trait stability and plasticity at different levels of organization. We propose neural traits measured at the cellular, circuit, and molecular levels will serve as more robust variables for evolutionary analyses. We include examples of particular traits and specific clades that are well-suited to answer questions about the role of sociality in nervous system evolution.
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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.