A larger brain confers a benefit in a spatial mate search learning task in male guppies.
A larger brain confers a benefit in a spatial mate search learning task in male guppies.
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DOI：
10.1093/beheco/aru227
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发表时间：
2015-03
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Kolm N
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kotrschal A;Corral-Lopez A;Amcoff M;Kolm N
大脑大会让你更聪明吗？如果你是一只雄孔雀鱼在迷宫中寻找雌孔雀鱼，它会。大脑大小和聪明之间的关系是一个有争议的问题，主要是由于缺乏实验数据。我们比较了人工培育的大脑大小的孔雀鱼，发现大脑大的雄性孔雀鱼更快地学会了通过空间迷宫的路线。因此，这些结果支持了大脑大小和聪明之间的联系。脊椎动物的大脑大小差异很大，而认知能力的提高被认为是大脑进化的关键力量。事实上，大量的比较研究表明，行为的认知需求方面与身体大小控制的大脑大小之间存在正相关关系。然而，相对大脑大小和认知能力之间的联系的实验证据是令人惊讶的稀缺，到目前为止，源于一项关于大脑大小选择孔雀鱼（Poecilia reticulata）的单一研究，其中大脑女性在数字学习试验中表现出优于小脑女性。因为在这项研究中，男性的结果是不确定的，我们在这里使用一个更具生态相关性的男性认知能力测试来研究相对较大的大脑是否也会增加男性的认知能力。我们在迷宫中比较了这些人工选择的大脑大和大脑小的雄性动物的求偶能力，发现大脑大的雄性动物在迷宫中学习寻找雌性动物的速度更快。大脑大的男性比大脑小的男性更快地减少了在迷宫中导航的时间，并且在训练2周后通过迷宫的速度几乎是前者的两倍。我们的研究结果支持相对较大的大脑在某些情况下也更适合男性，这进一步证实了脊椎动物大脑大小的变化是通过能量成本和认知收益之间的平衡产生的。
Does a large brain make you smarter? If you are a guppy male searching for a female in a maze, it does. The association between brain size and smartness is a debated issue, largely due to the lack of experimental data. We compared guppies artificially bred for large and small brains and found that large-brained males learned the route through a spatial maze faster. These results thus support a link between brain size and smartness. Brain size varies dramatically among vertebrates, and selection for increased cognitive abilities is thought to be the key force underlying the evolution of a large brain. Indeed, numerous comparative studies suggest positive relationships between cognitively demanding aspects of behavior and brain size controlled for body size. However, experimental evidence for the link between relative brain size and cognitive ability is surprisingly scarce and to date stems from a single study on brain size selected guppies (Poecilia reticulata), where large-brained females were shown to outperform small-brained females in a numerical learning assay. Because the results were inconclusive for males in that study, we here use a more ecologically relevant test of male cognitive ability to investigate whether or not a relatively larger brain increases cognitive ability also in males. We compared mate search ability of these artificially selected large- and small-brained males in a maze and found that large-brained males were faster at learning to find a female in a maze. Large-brained males decreased the time spent navigating the maze faster than small-brained males and were nearly twice as fast through the maze after 2 weeks of training. Our results support that relatively larger brains are better also for males in some contexts, which further substantiates that variation in vertebrate brain size is generated through the balance between energetic costs and cognitive benefits.
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2.5
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