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Brain morphology predicts social intelligence in wild cleaner fish

It is generally agreed that variation in social and/or environmental complexity yields variation in selective pressures on brain anatomy, where more complex brains should yield increased intelligence. While these insights are based on many evolutionary studies, it remains unclear how ecology impacts...

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Autores principales: Triki, Zegni, Emery, Yasmin, Teles, Magda C., Oliveira, Rui F., Bshary, Redouan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7752907/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33349638
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20130-2
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author Triki, Zegni
Emery, Yasmin
Teles, Magda C.
Oliveira, Rui F.
Bshary, Redouan
author_facet Triki, Zegni
Emery, Yasmin
Teles, Magda C.
Oliveira, Rui F.
Bshary, Redouan
author_sort Triki, Zegni
collection PubMed
description It is generally agreed that variation in social and/or environmental complexity yields variation in selective pressures on brain anatomy, where more complex brains should yield increased intelligence. While these insights are based on many evolutionary studies, it remains unclear how ecology impacts brain plasticity and subsequently cognitive performance within a species. Here, we show that in wild cleaner fish (Labroides dimidiatus), forebrain size of high-performing individuals tested in an ephemeral reward task covaried positively with cleaner density, while cerebellum size covaried negatively with cleaner density. This unexpected relationship may be explained if we consider that performance in this task reflects the decision rules that individuals use in nature rather than learning abilities: cleaners with relatively larger forebrains used decision-rules that appeared to be locally optimal. Thus, social competence seems to be a suitable proxy of intelligence to understand individual differences under natural conditions.
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spelling pubmed-77529072021-01-11 Brain morphology predicts social intelligence in wild cleaner fish Triki, Zegni Emery, Yasmin Teles, Magda C. Oliveira, Rui F. Bshary, Redouan Nat Commun Article It is generally agreed that variation in social and/or environmental complexity yields variation in selective pressures on brain anatomy, where more complex brains should yield increased intelligence. While these insights are based on many evolutionary studies, it remains unclear how ecology impacts brain plasticity and subsequently cognitive performance within a species. Here, we show that in wild cleaner fish (Labroides dimidiatus), forebrain size of high-performing individuals tested in an ephemeral reward task covaried positively with cleaner density, while cerebellum size covaried negatively with cleaner density. This unexpected relationship may be explained if we consider that performance in this task reflects the decision rules that individuals use in nature rather than learning abilities: cleaners with relatively larger forebrains used decision-rules that appeared to be locally optimal. Thus, social competence seems to be a suitable proxy of intelligence to understand individual differences under natural conditions. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-12-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7752907/ /pubmed/33349638 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20130-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Triki, Zegni
Emery, Yasmin
Teles, Magda C.
Oliveira, Rui F.
Bshary, Redouan
Brain morphology predicts social intelligence in wild cleaner fish
title Brain morphology predicts social intelligence in wild cleaner fish
title_full Brain morphology predicts social intelligence in wild cleaner fish
title_fullStr Brain morphology predicts social intelligence in wild cleaner fish
title_full_unstemmed Brain morphology predicts social intelligence in wild cleaner fish
title_short Brain morphology predicts social intelligence in wild cleaner fish
title_sort brain morphology predicts social intelligence in wild cleaner fish
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7752907/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33349638
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20130-2
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