Data accompanying manuscript: Allometric analysis of brain cell number in Hymenoptera suggests ant brains diverge from general trends

Many comparative neurobiological studies seek to connect sensory or behavioral attributes across taxa with differences in their brain composition. Such studies can only be interpreted in a meaningful way if the general brain-body relationships are known on a larger taxonomic scale. Recent studies in vertebrates suggest cell number and density may be better correlated with behavioral ability than brain mass or volume, but few estimates of such figures exist for insects. Here we use the isotropic fractionator method to estimate total brain cell numbers for 29 genera of Hymenoptera spanning seven subfamilies. We find estimates from using this method are comparable to traditional, whole-brain cell counts of two species and to published estimates from established stereological methods.  We present allometric scaling relationships between body and brain mass, brain mass and nuclei number, and body mass and cell density and find that ants stand out from bees and wasps as having particularly sm...