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An Exploration of the Social Brain Hypothesis in Insects

The “social brain hypothesis” posits that the cognitive demands of sociality have driven the evolution of substantially enlarged brains in primates and some other mammals. Whether such reasoning can apply to all social animals is an open question. Here we examine the evolutionary relationships betwe...

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Autores principales: Lihoreau, Mathieu, Latty, Tanya, Chittka, Lars
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3506958/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23205013
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2012.00442
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author Lihoreau, Mathieu
Latty, Tanya
Chittka, Lars
author_facet Lihoreau, Mathieu
Latty, Tanya
Chittka, Lars
author_sort Lihoreau, Mathieu
collection PubMed
description The “social brain hypothesis” posits that the cognitive demands of sociality have driven the evolution of substantially enlarged brains in primates and some other mammals. Whether such reasoning can apply to all social animals is an open question. Here we examine the evolutionary relationships between sociality, cognition, and brain size in insects, a taxonomic group characterized by an extreme sophistication of social behaviors and relatively simple nervous systems. We discuss the application of the social brain hypothesis in this group, based on comparative studies of brain volumes across species exhibiting various levels of social complexity. We illustrate how some of the major behavioral innovations of social insects may in fact require little information-processing and minor adjustments of neural circuitry, thus potentially selecting for more specialized rather than bigger brains. We argue that future work aiming to understand how animal behavior, cognition, and brains are shaped by the environment (including social interactions) should focus on brain functions and identify neural circuitry correlates of social tasks, not only brain sizes.
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spelling pubmed-35069582012-11-30 An Exploration of the Social Brain Hypothesis in Insects Lihoreau, Mathieu Latty, Tanya Chittka, Lars Front Physiol Physiology The “social brain hypothesis” posits that the cognitive demands of sociality have driven the evolution of substantially enlarged brains in primates and some other mammals. Whether such reasoning can apply to all social animals is an open question. Here we examine the evolutionary relationships between sociality, cognition, and brain size in insects, a taxonomic group characterized by an extreme sophistication of social behaviors and relatively simple nervous systems. We discuss the application of the social brain hypothesis in this group, based on comparative studies of brain volumes across species exhibiting various levels of social complexity. We illustrate how some of the major behavioral innovations of social insects may in fact require little information-processing and minor adjustments of neural circuitry, thus potentially selecting for more specialized rather than bigger brains. We argue that future work aiming to understand how animal behavior, cognition, and brains are shaped by the environment (including social interactions) should focus on brain functions and identify neural circuitry correlates of social tasks, not only brain sizes. Frontiers Media S.A. 2012-11-27 /pmc/articles/PMC3506958/ /pubmed/23205013 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2012.00442 Text en Copyright © 2012 Lihoreau, Latty and Chittka. http://www.frontiersin.org/licenseagreement This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc.
spellingShingle Physiology
Lihoreau, Mathieu
Latty, Tanya
Chittka, Lars
An Exploration of the Social Brain Hypothesis in Insects
title An Exploration of the Social Brain Hypothesis in Insects
title_full An Exploration of the Social Brain Hypothesis in Insects
title_fullStr An Exploration of the Social Brain Hypothesis in Insects
title_full_unstemmed An Exploration of the Social Brain Hypothesis in Insects
title_short An Exploration of the Social Brain Hypothesis in Insects
title_sort exploration of the social brain hypothesis in insects
topic Physiology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3506958/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23205013
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2012.00442
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