Relative Brain Size and Its Relation with the Associative Pallium in Birds

Sayol, Ferran; Lefebvre, Louis; Sol, Daniel

doi:10.1159/000444670

Cited by 58 publications

(51 citation statements)

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“…Moreover, recent comparative evidence reveals that large brains in birds are a result of disproportionately enlarged pallial areas known to play key roles in avian cognition (Sayol et al. ). These studies suggest that whole brain size is indeed a useful tool of assessing general evolutionary patterns of brain and cognitive evolution.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Light enough to travel or wise enough to stay? Brain size evolution and migratory behavior in birds

Vincze

2016

Evolution

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Brain size relative to body size is smaller in migratory than in nonmigratory birds. Two mutually nonexclusive hypotheses had been proposed to explain this association. On the one hand, the "energetic trade-off hypothesis" claims that migratory species were selected to have smaller brains because of the interplay between neural tissue volume and migratory flight. On the other hand, the "behavioral flexibility hypothesis" argues that resident species are selected to have higher cognitive capacities, and therefore larger brains, to enable survival in harsh winters, or to deal with environmental seasonality. Here, I test the validity and setting of these two hypotheses using 1466 globally distributed bird species. First, I show that the negative association between migration distance and relative brain size is very robust across species and phylogeny. Second, I provide strong support for the energetic trade-off hypothesis, by showing the validity of the trade-off among long-distance migratory species alone. Third, using resident and short-distance migratory species, I demonstrate that environmental harshness is associated with enlarged relative brain size, therefore arguably better cognition. My study provides the strongest comparative support to date for both the energetic trade-off and the behavioral flexibility hypotheses, and highlights that both mechanisms contribute to brain size evolution, but on different ends of the migratory spectrum.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Light enough to travel or wise enough to stay? Brain size evolution and migratory behavior in birds

Vincze

2016

Evolution

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“…When more than one specimen per species was examined, we first estimated the average brain volume for each sex and then we estimated the species value as the mean brain volume of the two sexes. Despite the heterogeneous functional organization of the brain, the pallial areas associated with general-domain cognition represent a large fraction of the entire brain, are disproportionally larger in large brained birds and accurately predict variation in the whole brain when allometric effects are appropriately accounted for5960.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental variation and the evolution of large brains in birds

et al. 2016

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Environmental variability has long been postulated as a major selective force in the evolution of large brains. However, assembling evidence for this hypothesis has proved difficult. Here, by combining brain size information for over 1,200 bird species with remote-sensing analyses to estimate temporal variation in ecosystem productivity, we show that larger brains (relative to body size) are more likely to occur in species exposed to larger environmental variation throughout their geographic range. Our reconstructions of evolutionary trajectories are consistent with the hypothesis that larger brains (relative to body size) evolved when the species invaded more seasonal regions. However, the alternative—that the species already possessed larger brains when they invaded more seasonal regions—cannot be completely ruled out. Regardless of the exact mechanism, our findings provide strong empirical support for the association between large brains and environmental variability.

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“…Following argumentation of Lendvai, Bókony, Angelier, Chastel, and Sol (), we have decided to use the size of the whole brain in our comparative analysis for two main reasons: (1) large availability of published data on whole‐brain volume/mass, and (2) tight correlations of whole‐brain volume with neuron density and volume of brain components, for example, associative pallium, responsible for domain‐general cognition abilities such as innovativeness and learning (Herculano‐Houzel, Collins, Wong, & Kaas, ; Sayol, Lefebvre, & Sol, ; Timmermans, Lefebvre, Boire, & Basu, ). Consistently, it has been shown that whole brain size positively correlates with several measures of behavioral flexibility and abilities to survive in novel ecological conditions (reviewed by Lefebvre & Sol, ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Longevity is associated with relative brain size in birds

Minias

Podlaszczuk

2017

Ecology and Evolution

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Brain size of vertebrates has long been recognized to evolve in close association with basic life‐history traits, including lifespan. According to the cognitive buffer hypothesis, large brains facilitate the construction of behavioral responses against novel socioecological challenges through general cognitive processes, which should reduce mortality and increase lifespan. While the occurrence of brain size–lifespan correlation has been well documented in mammals, much less evidence exists for a robust link between brain size and longevity in birds. The aim of this study was to use phylogenetically controlled comparative approach to test for the relationship between brain size and longevity among 384 avian species from 23 orders. We used maximum lifespan and maximum reproductive lifespan as the measures of longevity and accounted for a set of possible confounding effects, such as allometry, sampling effort, geographic patterns, and life‐history components (clutch size, incubation length, and mode of development). We found that both measures of longevity positively correlated with relative (residual) brain size. We also showed that major diversification of brain size preceded diversification of longevity in avian evolution. In contrast to previous findings, the effect of brain size on longevity was consistent across lineages with different development patterns, although the relatively low strength of this correlation could likely be attributed to the ubiquity of allomaternal care associated with the altricial mode of development. Our study indicates that the positive relationship between brain size and longevity in birds may be more general than previously thought.

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Relative Brain Size and Its Relation with the Associative Pallium in Birds

Cited by 58 publications

References 58 publications

Light enough to travel or wise enough to stay? Brain size evolution and migratory behavior in birds

Light enough to travel or wise enough to stay? Brain size evolution and migratory behavior in birds

Environmental variation and the evolution of large brains in birds

Longevity is associated with relative brain size in birds

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