Bees and other hymenopterans have yielded some tremendous insights into insect behavior. Should probably just say behavior, period. Here's another interesting piece of work from a team at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, appearing online in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Queens of the bee Megalopta genalis can exist as a individuals which have to go out and provide for themselves, or as social queens. In the case of the social queen, one of the daughters, who does not become sexually mature, goes out and does the foraging while mom stays home and takes care of the place.
The work, done in STRI's new facility for studying insect neurobiology, indicates that a region of the b
rain (called the mushroom bodies, or corpora pedunculata) is larger in the social queens than in the solitary ones. Mushrooms bodies are present in the brain of many insects (that's Drosophila at left, with the mushroom bodies in blue), and have been shown to be related to learning and memory, especially as it relates to smell. This is groundbreaking work, in that it makes an intraspecific comparison between social and asocial queens. Similar studies have been done previously, but with insects of different species and the complicating factors that entails.
So, does this mean that "social interactions are cognitively challenging" as suggested by Adam Smith of the Smithsonian team? That's certainly a possible explanation - I've had more than my share of cognitively challenging social interactions and I don't think I'm alone in that. But it seems a fairly convenient explanation. Why for example, are the social interactions of the stay-at-home social queen more of a challenge than the food-finding activity of the solitary one, especially given what we know about the function of the mushroom bodies? I think I want to see a little more.
The work, done in STRI's new facility for studying insect neurobiology, indicates that a region of the b
rain (called the mushroom bodies, or corpora pedunculata) is larger in the social queens than in the solitary ones. Mushrooms bodies are present in the brain of many insects (that's Drosophila at left, with the mushroom bodies in blue), and have been shown to be related to learning and memory, especially as it relates to smell. This is groundbreaking work, in that it makes an intraspecific comparison between social and asocial queens. Similar studies have been done previously, but with insects of different species and the complicating factors that entails.So, does this mean that "social interactions are cognitively challenging" as suggested by Adam Smith of the Smithsonian team? That's certainly a possible explanation - I've had more than my share of cognitively challenging social interactions and I don't think I'm alone in that. But it seems a fairly convenient explanation. Why for example, are the social interactions of the stay-at-home social queen more of a challenge than the food-finding activity of the solitary one, especially given what we know about the function of the mushroom bodies? I think I want to see a little more.
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