| 1. |
- Buechel, Séverine D., et al.
(författare)
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Brain size affects performance in a reversal-learning test
- 2018
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 0962-8452 .- 1471-2954. ; 285:1871
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It has become increasingly clear that a larger brain can confer cognitive benefits. Yet not all of the numerous aspects of cognition seem to be affected by brain size. Recent evidence suggests that some more basic forms of cognition, for instance colour vision, are not influenced by brain size. We therefore hypothesize that a larger brain is especially beneficial for distinct and gradually more complex aspects of cognition. To test this hypothesis, we assessed the performance of brain size selected female guppies (Poecilia reticulata) in two distinct aspects of cognition that differ in cognitive complexity. In a standard reversal-learning test we first investigated basic learning ability with a colour discrimination test, then reversed the reward contingency to specifically test for cognitive flexibility. We found that large-brained females outperformed small-brained females in the reversed-learning part of the test but not in the colour discrimination part of the test. Large-brained individuals are hence cognitively more flexible, which probably yields fitness benefits, as they may adapt more quickly to social and/or ecological cognitive challenges. Our results also suggest that a larger brain becomes especially advantageous with increasing cognitive complexity. These findings corroborate the significance of brain size for cognitive evolution.
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| 2. |
- Szorkovszky, Alex, et al.
(författare)
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Assortative interactions revealed by sorting of animal groups
- 2018
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Ingår i: Animal Behaviour. - : Elsevier BV. - 0003-3472 .- 1095-8282. ; 142, s. 165-179
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Animals living in groups can show substantial variation in social traits and this affects their social organization. However, as the specific mechanisms driving this organization are difficult to identify in already organized groups typically found in the wild, the contribution of interindividual variation to group level behaviour remains enigmatic. Here, we present results of an experiment to create and compare groups that vary in social organization, and study how individual behaviour varies between these groups. We iteratively sorted individuals between groups of guppies, Poecilia reticulata, by ranking the groups according to their directional alignment and then mixing similar groups. Over the rounds of sorting the consistency of the group rankings increased, producing groups that varied significantly in key social behaviours such as collective activity and group cohesion. The repeatability of the underlying individual behaviour was then estimated by comparing the experimental data to simulations. At the level of basic locomotion, individuals in more coordinated groups displayed stronger interactions with the centre of the group, and weaker interactions with their nearest neighbours. We propose that this provides the basis for a passive phenotypic assortment mechanism that may explain the structures of social networks in the wild.
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| 3. |
- Tsuboi, Masahito, et al.
(författare)
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Breakdown of brain-body allometry and the encephalization of birds and mammals
- 2018
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Ingår i: Nature Ecology & Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2397-334X. ; 2:9, s. 1492-1500
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The allometric relationship between brain and body size among vertebrates is often considered a manifestation of evolutionary constraints. However, birds and mammals have undergone remarkable encephalization, in which brain size has increased without corresponding changes in body size. Here, we explore the hypothesis that a reduction of phenotypic integration between brain and body size has facilitated encephalization in birds and mammals. Using a large dataset comprising 20,213 specimens across 4,587 species of jawed vertebrates, we show that the among-species (evolutionary) brain-body allometries are remarkably constant, both across vertebrate classes and across taxonomic levels. Birds and mammals, however, are exceptional in that their within-species (static) allometries are shallower and more variable than in other vertebrates. These patterns are consistent with the idea that birds and mammals have reduced allometric constraints that are otherwise ubiquitous across jawed vertebrates. Further exploration of ontogenetic allometries in selected taxa of birds, fishes and mammals reveals that birds and mammals have extended the period of fetal brain growth compared to fishes. Based on these findings, we propose that avian and mammalian encephalization has been contingent on increased variability in brain growth patterns.
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| 4. |
- van der Bijl, Wouter
(författare)
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phylopath : Easy phylogenetic path analysis in R
- 2018
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Ingår i: PeerJ. - : PeerJ. - 2167-8359. ; 6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Confirmatory path analysis allows researchers to evaluate and compare causal models using observational data. This tool has great value for comparative biologists since they are often unable to gather experimental data on macro-evolutionary hypotheses, but is cumbersome and error-prone to perform. I introduce phylopath, an R package that implements phylogenetic path analysis (PPA) as described by von Hardenberg Gonzalez-Vayer (2113). In addition to the published method, I provide support for the inclusion of binary variables. I illustrate PPA and phylopath by recreating part of a study on the relationship between brain size and vulnerability to extinction. The package aims to make the analysis straight-forward, providing convenience functions, and several plotting methods, which I hope will encourage the spread of the method.
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| 5. |
- van der Bijl, Wouter, 1989-
(författare)
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Why and how brain size evolves : Sociality, predation and allometry
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The evolution of the vertebrate brain has remained a topic of intense interest from biologists over many decades. Evolutionary biologists have seen it as an intriguing example of how the size and structure of a trait evolves across large phylogenies and under body size constraints, with both large shifts in deep evolutionary time and continuous smaller scale adaptation. Behavioral ecologists, on the other hand, have put great effort in trying to understand the costs and benefits of brain size and structural variation, usually assuming that the brain morphology of species is the result of a balance between energetic costs and cognitive benefits.I discuss two hypotheses that aim to explain under what circumstances a higher cognitive ability yields fitness benefits. The predation avoidance hypothesis states that large brains help to avoid predators. The social brain hypothesis predicts that cognition is especially beneficial for animals living in complex social environments. In practice these hypotheses are difficult to differentiate (paper I), as sociality often evolves in response to predation pressure. Comparative studies on either hypothesis should therefore aim to control for effects of the other hypothesis, and experiments may be especially useful in testing more explicit mechanistic explanations.I put the predation hypothesis to the test using two approaches, a comparative analysis and a within-species experiment. The comparative analysis (paper II) used published data on hawk predation and related it to both relative brain size and relative telencephalon size. While sparrowhawk predation was unrelated to brain morphology, birds that experience more goshawk predation had larger brains and telencephali. Next, I performed an experiment (paper III) on guppies that had been artificially selected for relative brain size. The selection lines have demonstrated differences in cognitive ability, as well as a marked survival difference under predation in females. I exposed fish to either a predator model or a novel object control, varying both sex and group size. Large-brained females performed fewer and shorter predator inspections than small-brained females, while keeping a larger distance from the predator model.I performed another experiment (paper IV) to investigate differences in social competence. I calculated the duration of contests between random pairs of small- and large-brained males, using movement data. When the loser was large-brained, contests were decided almost 40 minutes earlier than when the loser was small-brained, indicating that the decision for the loser to give up is made quicker with a larger brain.This thesis ends with an exploration of variation in the scaling relationship between brain and body size across vertebrates (paper V). The observed scaling between brain and body depends on what taxonomic level is under investigation. This effect, however, exclusively occurs in the two classes with the largest brains, mammals and birds. This indicates that strong developmental constraints have been alleviated in the two highly encephalized classes, but not elsewhere.In conclusion, I find evidence that both predator avoidance and social factors may contribute to the evolution of brain size. Further work on explicit behavioral frameworks for cognitive benefit hypotheses is likely to yield significant insight. Constraints in brain size may be hard to overcome and play an especially large role at a larger taxonomic scale.
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