Color is necessary for face discrimination in the Northern paper wasp, Polistes fuscatus

Jernigan, Christopher M.; Stafstrom, Jay A.; Zaba, Natalie C.; Vogt, Caleb C.; Sheehan, Michael J.

doi:10.1007/s10071-022-01691-9

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 48 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…1B). Based on behavioral data, hypothetical wasp specialized neurons should be sensitive to the shape and color of paper wasps ( 10, 26, 29 ). An alternative hypothesis is that cognitive specialization for facial recognition arises not because of specialized circuits but because social stimuli lead to increased excitement of generic circuits ( 30, 31 ).…”

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Front-facing wasp stimuli matched stimuli that had been used to behaviorally assess discrimination in P. fuscatus previously ( 10, 29 ) and were therefore our target stimuli, and silhouettes of those front-facing wasp stimuli acted as shape controls that lacked wasp color patterning. Scramble stimuli had been designed to disentangle front-facing wasp shape and color patterning responses.…”

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Neural correlates of individual facial recognition in a social wasp

Jernigan,

Freiwald,

Sheehan

2024

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Individual recognition is critical for social behavior across species. Whether recognition is mediated by circuits specialized for social information processing has been a matter of debate. Here we examine the neurobiological underpinning of individual visual facial recognition inPolistes fuscatuspaper wasps. Front-facing images of conspecific wasps broadly increase activity across many brain regions relative to other stimuli. Notably, we identify a localized subpopulation of neurons in the protocerebrum which show specialized selectivity for front-facing wasp images, which we termwasp cells. Thesewasp cellsencode information regarding the facial patterns, with ensemble activity correlating with facial identity.Wasp cellsare strikingly analogous to face cells in primates, indicating that specialized circuits are likely an adaptive feature of neural architecture to support visual recognition.

show abstract

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural correlates of individual facial recognition in a social wasp

Jernigan,

Freiwald,

Sheehan

2024

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“… 57 , 66 Nevertheless, as honeybees and many wasps are visual foragers and relatively closely related Hymenoptera, recent research shows comparative studies on these insect species can provide important information on visual processing mechanisms. 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 For example, paper wasps ( Polistes fuscatus ) are able to learn the abstract concept of same vs. different. 66 Paper wasps are also capable of learning and recalling unique facial markings of individual conspecifics and transitive inference, which is the ability to infer unknown relationships using information from known relationships (e.g., if A > B and B > C, then A > C).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%