ArticleNature human behaviour2024
Evolutionary-developmental (evo-devo) dynamics of hominin brain size.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Selection shapes diverse animal minds.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Evolution of diverse (and advanced) cognitive abilities through adaptive fine-tuning of learning and chunking mechanisms.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Why did the human brain size evolve? A way forward.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Proximate mechanisms underlying the coevolution of diet quality and relative brain size in primates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The Placental Steroid Hypothesis of Human Brain Evolution.Evolutionary anthropology · 2025Review
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Abstract
Brain size tripled in the human lineage over four million years, but why this occurred remains uncertain. Here, to study what caused this brain expansion, I mathematically model the evolutionary and developmental (evo-devo) dynamics of hominin brain size. The model recovers (1) the evolution of brain and body sizes of seven hominin species starting from brain and body sizes of the australopithecine scale, (2) the evolution of the hominin brain-body allometry and (3) major patterns of human development and evolution. I show that the brain expansion recovered is not caused by direct selection for brain size but by its genetic correlation with developmentally late preovulatory ovarian follicles. This correlation is generated over development if individuals experience a challenging ecology and seemingly cumulative culture, among other conditions. These findings show that the evolution of exceptionally adaptive traits may not be primarily caused by selection for them but by developmental constraints that divert selection.
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