Patterns of host plant use do not explain mushroom body expansion in Heliconiini butterflies.

ABSTRACT: The selective pressures leading to the elaboration of downstream, integrative processing centres, such as the mammalian neocortex or insect mushroom bodies, are often unclear. In Heliconius butterflies, the mushroom bodies are two to four times larger than those of their Heliconiini relatives, and the largest known in Lepidoptera. Heliconiini lay almost exclusively on Passiflora, which exhibit a remarkable diversity of leaf shape, and it has been suggested that the mushroom body expansion of Heliconius may have been driven by the cognitive demands of recognizing and learning leaf shapes of local host plants. We test this hypothesis using two complementary methods: (i) phylogenetic comparative analyses to test whether variation in mushroom body size is associated with t

SUBMITTER: Young FJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10369028 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature