Caste-biased patterns of brain investment in the subterranean termite Reticulitermes flavipes

Investment into neural tissue is expected to reflect the specific sensory and behavioral capabilities of a particular organism. Termites are eusocial insects that exhibit a caste system in which individuals can develop into one of several morphologically and behaviorally distinct castes. However, it is unclear to what extent these differences between castes are reflected in the anatomy of the brain. To address this question, we used deformation-based morphometry to conduct pairwise comparisons between the brains of different castes in the eastern subterranean termite, Reticulitermes flavipes. The dataset presented here consists of the confocal images of all the brains used in our analysis, separated by caste. Brains from five castes are presented - workers, soldiers, ergatoids, nymphs, and alates - which are further divided by sex., Eastern subterranean termite, Reticulitermes flavipes, brains were dissected and immunostained using the commercially available antibody nc82, which stains at presynaptic active zones. Images were captured using a Leica SP8 DLS laser scanning confocal microscope at the Art & Sciences Imaging Center at the University of Kentucky. Whole brains were imaged at 1024x1024 pixel resolution using a 10x dry objective (HC PL APO 10x/0.40). Image stacks were generated by capturing images of brains at 1 μm intervals, which were saved as .TIF files. These image stacks were then imported into Fiji (https://fiji.sc/) and rotated so that all were oriented in the same direction. Black image slices were either added or removed to the beginning and/or end of each image stack so that the total number of image slices equaled either 150 or 160 (depending on caste). Image stacks that appeared faint were brightened by lowering the maximum display range in Fiji's \"Brightness/Contrast\" menu. Image stacks wer..., , # Data from: Caste-biased patterns of brain investment in the subterranean termite Reticulitermes flavipes

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m37pvmd9x](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m37pvmd9x)

This dataset consists of the confocal data used in our analysis of caste-biased differences in termite brain allometry.

## Description of the data and file structure

Data are presented as .NRRD files, separated into different folders by caste. The castes imaged were workers, soldiers, ergatoids (worker-derived reproductives), nymphs, and alates. The first letter in each filename denotes the sex of the individual (F = female, M = male), followed by the caste (A = alate, E = ergatoid, N = nymph, S = soldier, W = worker), then a numerical identifier. Finally, \"_01\" is appended to the end of each filename, which was used in our pairwise comparisons between castes but serves no role in identifying brains.

We used Fiji ([https://fiji.sc/](https://fiji.sc/)) to visualize and prepare brains for comparis...