ArticleJournal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology2022
Behavioral performance and division of labor influence brain mosaicism in the leafcutter ant Atta cephalotes.
Article in Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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13 citing papers in PubMed, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- When a bigger brain is better: The case of bee olfactory learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Sex-specific division of labor in termites is linked to differential brain architecture and foraging gene expression.iScience · 2026Article
- Cambrian Artiopoda Reveals a Constraint in Euarthropod Brain Evolution.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
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- A reference brain for the clonal raider ant.Current biology : CB · 2026Article
- Neuropeptides specify and reprogram division of labor in the leafcutter ant Atta cephalotes.Cell · 2025Article
- The evolution of division of labour: preconditions and evolutionary feedback.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Neuropeptides specify and reprogram division of labor in the leafcutter antbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Differentiation of workers into soldiers is associated with a size reduction of higher-order brain centers in the neotropical termite Procornitermes araujoi.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Natural variability in bee brain size and symmetry revealed by micro-CT imaging and deep learning.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- White Paper: An Integrated Perspective on the Causes of Hypometric Metabolic Scaling in Animals.Integrative and comparative biology · 2022Article
- Social Brain Energetics: Ergonomic Efficiency, Neurometabolic Scaling, and Metabolic Polyphenism in Ants.Integrative and comparative biology · 2022Article
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3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
Brain evolution is hypothesized to be driven by behavioral selection on neuroarchitecture. We developed a novel metric of relative neuroanatomical investments involved in performing tasks varying in sensorimotor and processing demands across polymorphic task-specialized workers of the leafcutter ant Atta cephalotes and quantified brain size and structure to examine their correlation with our computational approximations. Investment in multisensory and motor integration for task performance was estimated to be greatest for media workers, whose highly diverse repertoire includes leaf-quality discrimination and leaf-harvesting tasks that likely involve demanding sensory and motor processes. Confocal imaging revealed that absolute brain volume increased with worker size and functionally specialized compartmental scaling differed among workers. The mushroom bodies, centers of sensory integration and learning and memory, and the antennal lobes, olfactory input sites, were larger in medias than in minims (gardeners) and significantly larger than in majors ("soldiers"), both of which had lower scores for involvement of olfactory processing in the performance of their characteristic tasks. Minims had a proportionally larger central complex compared to other workers. These results support the hypothesis that variation in task performance influences selection for mosaic brain structure, the independent evolution of proportions of the brain composed of different neuropils.
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