Divergence in brain size and brain region volumes across wild guppy populations

Reyes, Angie S.; Bittar, Amaury; Ávila, Laura; Botia, Catalina; Esmeral, Natalia P.; Bloch, Natasha I.

doi:10.1098/rspb.2021.2784

Cited by 11 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 102 publications

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“…However, identifying correlations between overall brain sizes and cognitive ability is difficult because differences in ecological and evolutionary backgrounds among species complicate interpretations (Chittka & Niven, 2009; Logan et al, 2018). Intraspecific comparative studies on the diversity of brain morphology and behavioral repertoire represent a powerful approach to understand the association between brain and behavior (Reyes et al, 2022). Phenotypic plasticity within the same species is an ideal system for comparative brain–behavior research.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plastic brain structure changes associated with the division of labor and aging in termites

et al. 2023

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Division of labor is a prominent feature of social insect societies, where different castes engage in different specialized tasks. As brain differences are associated with behavioral differences, brain anatomy may be linked to caste polymorphism. Here, we show that termite brain morphology changes markedly with caste differentiation and age in the termite, Reticulitermes speratus. Brain morphology was shown to be associated with reproductive division of labor, with reproductive individuals (alates and neotenic reproductives) having larger brains than nonreproductives (workers and soldiers). Micro‐computed tomography (CT) imaging and dissection observations showed that the king's brain morphology changed markedly with shrinkage of the optic lobes during their long life in the dark. Behavioral experiments showed that mature primary kings lose visual function as a result of optic lobe shrinkage. These results suggested that termites restructure their nervous systems to perform necessary tasks as they undergo caste differentiation, and that they also show flexible changes in brain morphology even after the final molt. This study showed that brain morphology in social insects is linked to caste and aging, and that the evolution of the division of labor is underpinned by the development of diverse neural systems for specialized tasks.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plastic brain structure changes associated with the division of labor and aging in termites

et al. 2023

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“…Many earlier investigations on plasticity and adaptive selection have focused on general proxies of cognition, such as brain size (e.g. [61,62]). The findings in relation to function-specific effects suggest the need of a more precise approach that investigates cognition at the level of single functions to depict cognitive adaptation fully.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive phenotypic plasticity induces individual variability along a cognitive trade-off

2023

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Animal species, including humans, display patterns of individual variability in cognition that are difficult to explain. For instance, some individuals perform well in certain cognitive tasks but show difficulties in others. We experimentally analysed the contribution of cognitive plasticity to such variability. Theory suggests that diametrically opposed cognitive phenotypes increase individuals' fitness in environments with different conditions such as resource predictability. Therefore, if selection has generated plasticity that matches individuals’ cognitive phenotypes to the environment, this might produce remarkable cognitive variability. We found that guppies, Poecilia reticulata , exposed to an environment with high resource predictability (i.e. food available at the same time and in the same location) developed enhanced learning abilities. Conversely, guppies exposed to an environment with low resource predictability (i.e. food available at a random time and location) developed enhanced cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control. These cognitive differences align along a trade-off between functions that favour the acquisition of regularities such as learning and functions that adjust behaviour to changing conditions (cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control). Therefore, adaptive cognitive plasticity in response to resource predictability (and potentially similar factors) is a key determinant of cognitive individual differences.

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“…Despite this, most studies to date analyze laboratory populations with relatively low variability in traits between individuals (Tramontin et al, 1998;Ward et al, 2001;Herculano-Houzel et al, 2015a;Marhounová et al, 2019), while only a few include different populations (Kverková et al, 2020). Unsurprisingly, the variation in brain anatomy is significantly larger across populations than within populations (Kverková et al, 2020;Reyes et al, 2022). In domesticated chickens, selection has led to extreme phenotypic changes in a wide variety of traits, but one of the core changes has been to brain size and composition (Wright, 2015;Henriksen et al, 2016;Wright et al, 2020;Racicot et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuronal and non-neuronal scaling across brain regions within an intercross of domestic and wild chickens

et al. 2022

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The allometric scaling of the brain size and neuron number across species has been extensively studied in recent years. With the exception of primates, parrots, and songbirds, larger brains have more neurons but relatively lower neuronal densities than smaller brains. Conversely, when considering within-population variability, it has been shown that mice with larger brains do not necessarily have more neurons but rather more neurons in the brain reflect higher neuronal density. To what extent this intraspecific allometric scaling pattern of the brain applies to individuals from other species remains to be explored. Here, we investigate the allometric relationships among the sizes of the body, brain, telencephalon, cerebellum, and optic tectum, and the numbers of neurons and non-neuronal cells of the telencephalon, cerebellum, and optic tectum across 66 individuals originated from an intercross between wild and domestic chickens. Our intercross of chickens generates a population with high variation in brain size, making it an excellent model to determine the allometric scaling of the brain within population. Our results show that larger chickens have larger brains with moderately more neurons and non-neuronal cells. Yet, absolute number of neurons and non-neuronal cells correlated strongly and positively with the density of neurons and non-neuronal cells, respectively. As previously shown in mice, this scaling pattern is in stark contrast with what has been found across different species. Our findings suggest that neuronal scaling rules across species are not a simple extension of the neuronal scaling rules that apply within a species, with important implications for the evolutionary developmental origins of brain diversity.

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Divergence in brain size and brain region volumes across wild guppy populations

Cited by 11 publications

References 102 publications

Plastic brain structure changes associated with the division of labor and aging in termites

Plastic brain structure changes associated with the division of labor and aging in termites

Adaptive phenotypic plasticity induces individual variability along a cognitive trade-off

Neuronal and non-neuronal scaling across brain regions within an intercross of domestic and wild chickens

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