ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017
Coevolution of cultural intelligence, extended life history, sociality, and brain size in primates.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 64 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 240 citations in OpenAlex.
- Socioecological complexity in primate groups and its cognitive correlates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Pooled it
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- Linking the evolution of two prefrontal brain regions to social and foraging challenges in primates.eLife · 2024Article
- The central role of the individual in the history of brains.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Review
- Short-term memory, attentional control and brain size in primates.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Agentic processes in cultural evolution: relevance to Anthropocene sustainability.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Commemorating the monkey bars, catalyst of debate at the intersection of human evolutionary biology and public health.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2024Review
- Individual preferences for sound tool design in a parrot.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Both Diet and Sociality Affect Primate Brain-Size Evolution.Systematic biology · 2023Article
- Host-Parasite Coevolution in Primates.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Extended parental provisioning and variation in vertebrate brain sizes.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- The evolution of the human mitochondrial bc1 complex- adaptation for reduced rate of superoxide production?Journal of bioenergetics and biomembranes · 2023Article
- The experimental evolution of human culture: flexibility, fidelity and environmental instability.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Explanations for primate brain expansion and the evolution of human cognition and culture remain contentious despite extensive research. While multiple comparative analyses have investigated variation in brain size across primate species, very few have addressed why primates vary in how much they use social learning. Here, we evaluate the hypothesis that the enhanced reliance on socially transmitted behavior observed in some primates has coevolved with enlarged brains, complex sociality, and extended lifespans. Using recently developed phylogenetic comparative methods we show that, across primate species, a measure of social learning proclivity increases with absolute and relative brain volume, longevity (specifically reproductive lifespan), and social group size, correcting for research effort. We also confirm relationships of absolute and relative brain volume with longevity (both juvenile period and reproductive lifespan) and social group size, although longevity is generally the stronger predictor. Relationships between social learning, brain volume, and longevity remain when controlling for maternal investment and are therefore not simply explained as a by-product of the generally slower life history expected for larger brained species. Our findings suggest that both brain expansion and high reliance on culturally transmitted behavior coevolved with sociality and extended lifespan in primates. This coevolution is consistent with the hypothesis that the evolution of large brains, sociality, and long lifespans has promoted reliance on culture, with reliance on culture in turn driving further increases in brain volume, cognitive abilities, and lifespans in some primate lineages.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.