Problems with using comparative analyses of avian brain size to test hypotheses of cognitive evolution.

ABSTRACT: There are multiple hypotheses for the evolution of cognition. The most prominent hypotheses are the Social Intelligence Hypothesis (SIH) and the Ecological Intelligence Hypothesis (EIH), which are often pitted against one another. These hypotheses tend to be tested using broad-scale comparative studies of brain size, where brain size is used as a proxy of cognitive ability, and various social and/or ecological variables are included as predictors. Here, we test how robust conclusions drawn from such analyses may be. First, we investigate variation in brain and body size measurements across >1000 bird species. We demonstrate that there is substantial variation in brain and body size estimates across datasets, indicating that conclusions drawn from comparative brain size models are likely to

SUBMITTER: Hooper R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9307164 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature