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The lemur baseline: how lemurs compare to monkeys and apes in the Primate Cognition Test Battery

Primates have relatively larger brains than other mammals even though brain tissue is energetically costly. Comparative studies of variation in cognitive skills allow testing of evolutionary hypotheses addressing socioecological factors driving the evolution of primate brain size. However, data on c...

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Autores principales: Fichtel, Claudia, Dinter, Klara, Kappeler, Peter M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7520086/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33024643
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10025
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author Fichtel, Claudia
Dinter, Klara
Kappeler, Peter M.
author_facet Fichtel, Claudia
Dinter, Klara
Kappeler, Peter M.
author_sort Fichtel, Claudia
collection PubMed
description Primates have relatively larger brains than other mammals even though brain tissue is energetically costly. Comparative studies of variation in cognitive skills allow testing of evolutionary hypotheses addressing socioecological factors driving the evolution of primate brain size. However, data on cognitive abilities for meaningful interspecific comparisons are only available for haplorhine primates (great apes, Old- and New World monkeys) although strepsirrhine primates (lemurs and lorises) serve as the best living models of ancestral primate cognitive skills, linking primates to other mammals. To begin filling this gap, we tested members of three lemur species (Microcebus murinus, Varecia variegata, Lemur catta) with the Primate Cognition Test Battery, a comprehensive set of experiments addressing physical and social cognitive skills that has previously been used in studies of haplorhines. We found no significant differences in cognitive performance among lemur species and, surprisingly, their average performance was not different from that of haplorhines in many aspects. Specifically, lemurs’ overall performance was inferior in the physical domain but matched that of haplorhines in the social domain. These results question a clear-cut link between brain size and cognitive skills, suggesting a more domain-specific distribution of cognitive abilities in primates, and indicate more continuity in cognitive abilities across primate lineages than previously thought.
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spelling pubmed-75200862020-10-05 The lemur baseline: how lemurs compare to monkeys and apes in the Primate Cognition Test Battery Fichtel, Claudia Dinter, Klara Kappeler, Peter M. PeerJ Animal Behavior Primates have relatively larger brains than other mammals even though brain tissue is energetically costly. Comparative studies of variation in cognitive skills allow testing of evolutionary hypotheses addressing socioecological factors driving the evolution of primate brain size. However, data on cognitive abilities for meaningful interspecific comparisons are only available for haplorhine primates (great apes, Old- and New World monkeys) although strepsirrhine primates (lemurs and lorises) serve as the best living models of ancestral primate cognitive skills, linking primates to other mammals. To begin filling this gap, we tested members of three lemur species (Microcebus murinus, Varecia variegata, Lemur catta) with the Primate Cognition Test Battery, a comprehensive set of experiments addressing physical and social cognitive skills that has previously been used in studies of haplorhines. We found no significant differences in cognitive performance among lemur species and, surprisingly, their average performance was not different from that of haplorhines in many aspects. Specifically, lemurs’ overall performance was inferior in the physical domain but matched that of haplorhines in the social domain. These results question a clear-cut link between brain size and cognitive skills, suggesting a more domain-specific distribution of cognitive abilities in primates, and indicate more continuity in cognitive abilities across primate lineages than previously thought. PeerJ Inc. 2020-09-24 /pmc/articles/PMC7520086/ /pubmed/33024643 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10025 Text en ©2020 Fichtel et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Fichtel, Claudia
Dinter, Klara
Kappeler, Peter M.
The lemur baseline: how lemurs compare to monkeys and apes in the Primate Cognition Test Battery
title The lemur baseline: how lemurs compare to monkeys and apes in the Primate Cognition Test Battery
title_full The lemur baseline: how lemurs compare to monkeys and apes in the Primate Cognition Test Battery
title_fullStr The lemur baseline: how lemurs compare to monkeys and apes in the Primate Cognition Test Battery
title_full_unstemmed The lemur baseline: how lemurs compare to monkeys and apes in the Primate Cognition Test Battery
title_short The lemur baseline: how lemurs compare to monkeys and apes in the Primate Cognition Test Battery
title_sort lemur baseline: how lemurs compare to monkeys and apes in the primate cognition test battery
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7520086/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33024643
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10025
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