Impact of the social environment in insect sensory systems

Jernigan, Christopher M; Uy, Floria MK

doi:10.1016/j.cois.2023.101083

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 66 publications

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“…Adeptly navigating the social environment requires animals to modify their behavior depending on who they are interacting with. Given the importance of social interactions for fitness, there has been a longstanding interest in the evolution and mechanisms that mediate social cognition, especially recognition abilities ( 1–8 ). Social stimuli are often highly salient, with enhanced social discrimination or recognition abilities described in multiple species ( 9–12 ), and by specialized regions of the vertebrate brain ( 13–16 ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Neural correlates of individual facial recognition in a social wasp

Jernigan,

Freiwald,

Sheehan

2024

Preprint

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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.

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Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural correlates of individual facial recognition in a social wasp

Jernigan,

Freiwald,

Sheehan

2024

Preprint

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Editorial overview: From neurons to ecology: how sensory information guides insect behaviour

Hempel de Ibarra,

Mustard

2025

Current Opinion in Insect Science

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Warming up through buildings and roads: what we know and should know about the urban heat island effect on bees

Polidori,

Ferrari,

Ronchetti

et al. 2023

Front. Bee Sci.

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Urbanization leads to cities having higher temperatures than surrounding non-urban areas [this is known as the urban heat island (UHI) effect]. Very little is known about the impacts of the UHI effect on bees, despite the importance of temperature on many aspects of bees’ life suggesting that these may be not negligible. In this study, we aimed to highlight how the UHI effect could impact relevant functional traits of bees in cities, proposing several ad hoc hypotheses for traits that have thus far been investigated only in few studies or not at all, based on what we know from non-urban studies. The UHI effect was shown to influence bee body size, and generally tended to reduce the body size of bees in cities. Urban temperature may also affect bees’ wing morphology, and thus their overall flight morphology parameters. Individuals may be more brightly colored in cities. Bee ommatidial size and the number of antennal thermoreceptors they have may be smaller and fewer, respectively, in cities than in non-urban areas. As expected, because urban bees face a higher risk of desiccation, higher proportions of alkanes and longer main-carbon chain lengths are expected in their cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) profiles. Stress biomarkers can also occur at greater concentrations in bees in cities and specific bacteria in the bee gut may occur at lower abundances. Warm urban temperatures may impact the life cycle of pathogens by reducing their proliferation. Aggression levels may be increased, and eusocial species may present more worker phases per year due to the UHI effect. All of these proposed impacts could be likely more visible in solitary and primitively eusocial bee species, which are those suspected to have a more limited dispersal ability. Comparative studies would help in the proper testing of these hypotheses.

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Impact of the social environment in insect sensory systems

Cited by 3 publications

References 66 publications

Neural correlates of individual facial recognition in a social wasp

Neural correlates of individual facial recognition in a social wasp

Editorial overview: From neurons to ecology: how sensory information guides insect behaviour

Warming up through buildings and roads: what we know and should know about the urban heat island effect on bees

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