eprintid: 10110429
rev_number: 14
eprint_status: archive
userid: 608
dir: disk0/10/11/04/29
datestamp: 2020-09-23 09:56:49
lastmod: 2021-10-09 22:42:53
status_changed: 2020-09-23 09:56:49
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Sayol, F
creators_name: Collado, MÁ
creators_name: Garcia-Porta, J
creators_name: Seid, MA
creators_name: Gibbs, J
creators_name: Agorreta, A
creators_name: Mauro, DS
creators_name: Raemakers, I
creators_name: Sol, D
creators_name: Bartomeus, I
title: Feeding specialization and longer generation time are associated with relatively larger brains in bees
ispublished: pub
divisions: UCL
divisions: B02
divisions: C08
divisions: D09
divisions: F99
keywords: Apoidea, brain evolution, lecticity, voltinism
note: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
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 brain size might be explained by adaptive hypotheses. We found that ecologically specialized species with single generations have larger brains-relative to their body size-than generalist or multi-generation species, but we did not find an effect of sociality on relative brain size. Phylogenetic reconstruction further supported the existence of different adaptive optima for relative brain size in lineages differing in feeding specialization and reproductive strategy. Our findings shed new light on the evolution of the insect brain, highlighting the importance of ecological pressures over social factors and suggesting that these pressures are different from those previously found to influence brain evolution in other taxa.
date: 2020-09-30
date_type: published
official_url: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.0762
oa_status: green
full_text_type: other
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
verified: verified_manual
elements_id: 1813921
doi: 10.1098/rspb.2020.0762
lyricists_name: Sayol, Ferran
lyricists_id: FSAYO96
actors_name: Sayol, Ferran
actors_id: FSAYO96
actors_role: owner
full_text_status: public
publication: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
volume: 287
number: 1935
article_number: 20200762
event_location: England
citation:        Sayol, F;    Collado, MÁ;    Garcia-Porta, J;    Seid, MA;    Gibbs, J;    Agorreta, A;    Mauro, DS;             ... Bartomeus, I; + view all <#>        Sayol, F;  Collado, MÁ;  Garcia-Porta, J;  Seid, MA;  Gibbs, J;  Agorreta, A;  Mauro, DS;  Raemakers, I;  Sol, D;  Bartomeus, I;   - view fewer <#>    (2020)    Feeding specialization and longer generation time are associated with relatively larger brains in bees.                   Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences , 287  (1935)    , Article 20200762.  10.1098/rspb.2020.0762 <https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.0762>.       Green open access   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10110429/1/Sayol_ProcB_MS_accepted.pdf