Department of Biology, West Virginia University, 3139 Life Sciences Building, 53 Campus Drive, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA.
Curr Opin Insect Sci. 2016 Jun;15:1-8. doi: 10.1016/j.cois.2016.01.010. Epub 2016 Feb 4.
The 'social brain hypothesis,' the relationship between social behavior and brain size, does not apply to insects. In social insects, especially those of the Order Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps), sociality has not always increased individual behavioral repertoires and is associated with only subtle variation in the size of a higher brain center, the mushroom bodies. Rather than sociality, selection for novel visual behavior, perhaps spatial learning, has led to the acquisition of novel visual inputs and profound increases in mushroom body size. This occurred in nonsocial ancestors suggesting that the sensory and cognitive advantages of large mushroom bodies may be preadaptations to sociality. Adaptations of the insect mushroom bodies are more reliably associated with sensory ecology than social behavior.
“社会脑假说”，即社会行为与大脑大小之间的关系，并不适用于昆虫。在社会性昆虫中，特别是膜翅目（蚂蚁、蜜蜂和黄蜂），社会性并没有总是增加个体行为范围，并且只与一个较高的脑中心——蘑菇体的大小的细微变化相关。选择新颖的视觉行为，而不是社会性，导致了新颖的视觉输入和蘑菇体大小的显著增加。这种情况发生在非社会性的祖先中，表明大蘑菇体的感觉和认知优势可能是社会性的预先适应。昆虫蘑菇体的适应更多地与感觉生态而不是社会行为相关。
