ArticleNature ecology & evolution2024
Co-evolutionary dynamics of mammalian brain and body size.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2024. 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 15 papers.
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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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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Competing models of hominin body size evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- The "fire of life cycles": age-specific metabolic scaling within and among species.Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2026Review
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- Genetic Insights into Head-to-Body Ratios Via Deep Learning-Based Image Segmentation and Implications for Common Diseases.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Macroevolutionary brain scaling is a microevolutionary metaphenomenon.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Gestation length both shapes and is shaped by other life history traits in terrestrial eutherian mammals.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- Human dexterity and brains evolved hand in hand.Communications biology · 2025Article
- The fish challenge to vertebrate cognitive evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Embodied cognitive evolution and the limits of convergence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- 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
- Trait macroevolution in the presence of covariates.Nature communications · 2025Article
- DCHS1 Modulates Forebrain Proportions in Modern Humans via a Glycosylation Change.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Cortical areas associated to higher cognition drove primate brain evolution.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Cautionary tales on the use of proxies to estimate body size and form of extinct animals.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Despite decades of comparative studies, puzzling aspects of the relationship between mammalian brain and body mass continue to defy satisfactory explanation. Here we show that several such aspects arise from routinely fitting log-linear models to the data: the correlated evolution of brain and body mass is in fact log-curvilinear. This simultaneously accounts for several phenomena for which diverse biological explanations have been proposed, notably variability in scaling coefficients across clades, low encephalization in larger species and the so-called taxon-level problem. Our model implies a need to revisit previous findings about relative brain mass. Accounting for the true scaling relationship, we document dramatically varying rates of relative brain mass evolution across the mammalian phylogeny, and we resolve the question of whether there is an overall trend for brain mass to increase through time. We find a trend in only three mammalian orders, which is by far the strongest in primates, setting the stage for the uniquely rapid directional increase ultimately producing the computational powers of the human brain.
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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.