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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences
Microhabitat Use Affects Brain Size And Structure In Intertidal Gobies, Gemma E. White, Culum Brown
Microhabitat Use Affects Brain Size And Structure In Intertidal Gobies, Gemma E. White, Culum Brown
Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection
The ecological cognition hypothesis poses that the brains and behaviours of individuals are largely shaped by the environments in which they live and the associated challenges they must overcome during their lives. Here we examine the effect of environmental complexity on relative brain size in 4 species of intertidal gobies from differing habitats. Two species were rock pool specialists that lived on spatially complex rocky shores, while the remainder lived on dynamic, but structurally simple, sandy shores. We found that rock pool-dwelling species had relatively larger brains and telencephalons in particular, while sand-dwelling species had a larger optic tectum and …
The Evolutionary History Of Cetacean Brain And Body Size, Stephen H. Montgomery, Jonathan H. Geisler, Michael R. Mcgowen, Charlotte Fox, Lori Marino, John Gatesy
The Evolutionary History Of Cetacean Brain And Body Size, Stephen H. Montgomery, Jonathan H. Geisler, Michael R. Mcgowen, Charlotte Fox, Lori Marino, John Gatesy
Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection
Cetaceans rival primates in brain size relative to body size and include species with the largest brains and biggest bodies to have ever evolved. Cetaceans are remarkably diverse, varying in both phenotypes by several orders of magnitude, with notable differences between the two extant suborders, Mysticeti and Odontoceti.We analyzed the evolutionary history of brain and body mass, and relative brain size measured by the encephalization quotient (EQ), using a data set of extinct and extant taxa to capture temporal variation in the mode and direction of evolution. Our results suggest that cetacean brain and body mass evolved under strong directional …
Does Diving Limit Brain Size In Cetaceans?, Lori Marino, Daniel Sol, Kristen Toren, Louis Lefebvre
Does Diving Limit Brain Size In Cetaceans?, Lori Marino, Daniel Sol, Kristen Toren, Louis Lefebvre
Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection
We test the longstanding hypothesis, known as the dive constraint hypothesis, that the oxygenation demands of diving pose a constraint on aquatic mammal brain size.Using a sample of 23 cetacean species we examine the relationship among six different measures of relative brain size, body size, and maximum diving duration. Unlike previous tests we include body size as a covariate and perform independent contrast analyses to control for phylogeny. We show that diving does not limit brain size in cetaceans and therefore provide no support for the dive constraint hypothesis. Instead, body size is the main predictor of maximum diving duration …