Feeding specialization and longer generation time are associated with relatively larger brains in bees.

ABSTRACT: Despite their miniature brains, insects exhibit substantial variation in brain size. Although the functional significance of this variation is increasingly recognized, research on whether differences in insect brain sizes are mainly the result of constraints or selective pressures has hardly been performed. Here, we address this gap by combining prospective and retrospective phylogenetic-based analyses of brain size for a major insect group, bees (superfamily Apoidea). Using a brain dataset of 93 species from North America and Europe, we found that body size was the single best predictor of brain size in bees. However, the analyses also revealed that substantial variation in brain size remained even when adjusting for body size. We consequently asked whether such variation in relative brai

SUBMITTER: Sayol F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7542820 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature