Brains and the city: big-brained passerine birds succeed in urban environments
Brains and the city: big-brained passerine birds succeed in urban environments
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DOI：
10.1098/rsbl.2011.0341
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发表时间：
2011-10-23
期刊：
影响因子：
3.3
通讯作者：
Kolm, Niclas
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Maklakov, Alexei A.;Immler, Simone;Kolm, Niclas
城市地区是地球上人类改变最多的环境之一，随着人口增长和移民，它们将迅速扩张。确定决定哪些物种可能在城市化栖息地成功的生物特征对于预测全球生物多样性趋势非常重要。我们提供了第一个证据直观但未经检验的假设，相对大脑大小是一个关键因素，使动物成功地建立在城市。我们在贝叶斯框架中应用系统发育混合模型，表明成功殖民12个欧洲城市中至少一个城市的雀形目物种比避开这些城市地区的物种更有可能属于大脑谱系。这些数据支持了将相对大脑大小与脊椎动物种群在新的和不断变化的环境中持续生存的能力联系起来的发现，并对我们理解生物多样性的最新趋势具有重要意义。
Urban regions are among the most human-altered environments on Earth and they are poised for rapid expansion following population growth and migration. Identifying the biological traits that determine which species are likely to succeed in urbanized habitats is important for predicting global trends in biodiversity. We provide the first evidence for the intuitive yet untested hypothesis that relative brain size is a key factor predisposing animals to successful establishment in cities. We apply phylogenetic mixed modelling in a Bayesian framework to show that passerine species that succeed in colonizing at least one of 12 European cities are more likely to belong to big-brained lineages than species avoiding these urban areas. These data support findings linking relative brain size with the ability to persist in novel and changing environments in vertebrate populations, and have important implications for our understanding of recent trends in biodiversity.