Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Evol Dev. 2020 Jul;22(4):312-322. doi: 10.1111/ede.12333. Epub 2020 Mar 11.
A functional relationship between relative brain size and cognitive performance has been hypothesized. However, the influence of ontogenetic niche shifts on cognitive performance is not well understood. Increases in body size can affect niche use but distinguishing nonecologically relevant brain development from effects associated with ecology is difficult. If survival is enhanced by functional changes in ecocognitive performance over ontogeny, then brain size development should track ontogenetic shifts in ecology. We control for nonecologically relevant brain size development by comparing brain growth between two ecotypes of Pumpkinseed sunfish whose ecologies diverge over ontogeny from a shared juvenile niche. Brain size differs between ecotypes from their birth year onwards even though their foraging ecology appears to diverge at age 3. This finding suggests that the eco-cognitive requirements of adult niches shape early life brain growth more than the requirements of juvenile ecology.
已经假设了相对大脑大小和认知表现之间存在功能关系。然而，对于个体发育生态位转移对认知表现的影响还不是很清楚。体型的增加会影响生态位的利用，但区分与生态无关的大脑发育与与生态相关的大脑发育是很困难的。如果在个体发育过程中，通过生态认知表现的功能变化来提高生存能力，那么大脑的发育应该与生态位的个体发育变化相适应。我们通过比较两种南瓜籽太阳鱼的脑生长来控制与生态无关的大脑发育，这两种太阳鱼的生态在个体发育过程中从共同的幼年生态位上发生了分歧。即使它们的觅食生态在 3 岁时似乎出现了分歧，从出生年份开始，两种生态型之间的大脑大小就存在差异。这一发现表明，成年生态位的生态认知要求比幼年生态的要求更能塑造早期的大脑生长。
