PhD Candidate Drexel University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Brains change to accommodate the cognitive requirements of new behaviors throughout an individual animal’s life. Families are the basic units of most animal societies, but relatively few species provide pair-based collaborative parental care. Parental care behavior leads to changes in brain structure and function in a diverse array of vertebrate lineages including fish, rodents and primates (humans). We asked whether similar patterns in brain plasticity hold in arthropods. We used Hemilepistus reaumuri, a terrestrial isopod with monogamous parents that care for their offspring as a model to characterize the development of the parental brain. This species synchronizes guarding the burrow between two parents, and navigation experience is gained through foraging trips to bring food back to young immobile offspring. We expected to see changes upon the onset of parenthood in neuronal density and volume of the hemiellipsoid body and central complex. These regions are believed to be associated with learning, memory, and sensory integration. A combination of histological and staining techniques and micro-computed tomography (microCT) were used to describe the hemiellpsoid body and central complex in the brains of these desert dwelling isopods before and after the offspring care season. This study is the first behavior-coupled quantification of isopod brains at more than one time-point throughout development, and provides a basis for comparing arthropod and vertebrate biparental care systems.
