Wasps in Complex Societies May Have Less Complex Cognition Due to Shared Brain Power (IMAGE)
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A new comparative study of social and solitary wasp species, including these wasps of the species Protopolybia exigua, suggests that as social behavior evolved, the brain regions for central cognitive processing in social insect species shrank. This is the opposite of the pattern of brain increases with sociality that has been documented for several kinds of vertebrate animals including mammals, birds and fish. "This nest under a leaf in a Costa Rican botanical garden shows some of the range of social complexity wasps provide," said Sean O'Donnell, Ph.D., Drexel University professor and lead author of the study. "They are in an advanced lineage, the swarm-founders, yet they have small colonies."
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Sean O'Donnell
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