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. 2025 Sep 16:S1364-6613(25)00226-8.
doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2025.08.004. Online ahead of print.

Individual face recognition in wasps

Elizabeth A Tibbetts  1
Affiliations

Individual face recognition in wasps

Elizabeth A Tibbetts. Trends Cogn Sci. .

Abstract

Paper wasp societies use behaviors like individual face recognition, configural face processing, social eavesdropping, and transitive inference to manage social relationships. Despite their evolutionary distance, wasps and vertebrates share similarities in their social recognition behavior, indicating that these behaviors can be implemented in miniature brains without a neocortex.

Keywords: configural processing; face recognition; individual recognition; social eavesdropping; transitive inference; viewpoint-independent recognition.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of interests The authors declare no competing interests.

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