Manipulation complexity in primates coevolved with brain size and terrestriality.
Manipulation complexity in primates coevolved with brain size and terrestriality.
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DOI：
10.1038/srep24528
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发表时间：
2016-04-14
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Isler K
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Heldstab SA;Kosonen ZK;Koski SE;Burkart JM;van Schaik CP;Isler K
到目前为止，人类占据了所有哺乳动物中最复杂的觅食生态位，建立在复杂的技术基础上，同时表现出异常大的大脑。为了研究这些特征背后的进化过程，我们在36种非人类灵长类动物的样本中研究了操作复杂性与大脑大小、认知测试性能、陆生性和饮食质量的关系。我们将食物相关环境中的操纵回合分为单手和双手动作，以及异步或同步的手和手指使用，并使用Guttman缩放建立了操纵复杂性水平。操纵类别遵循累积排名。它们在使用具有认知挑战性的食物获取技术的物种中特别高，例如提取觅食和工具使用。操作复杂性也一直与大脑大小和认知测试表现呈正相关。与先前对食肉动物的研究不同，我们发现，灵长类动物的大脑大小和获取食物的复杂操作经历了相关的进化，这可能受到了陆生性的影响。因此，我们的研究结果支持了人类谱系中操作复杂性和认知之间进化反馈回路的想法，这可能是由越来越多的陆地习惯所增强的。
Humans occupy by far the most complex foraging niche of all mammals, built around sophisticated technology, and at the same time exhibit unusually large brains. To examine the evolutionary processes underlying these features, we investigated how manipulation complexity is related to brain size, cognitive test performance, terrestriality, and diet quality in a sample of 36 non-human primate species. We categorized manipulation bouts in food-related contexts into unimanual and bimanual actions, and asynchronous or synchronous hand and finger use, and established levels of manipulative complexity using Guttman scaling. Manipulation categories followed a cumulative ranking. They were particularly high in species that use cognitively challenging food acquisition techniques, such as extractive foraging and tool use. Manipulation complexity was also consistently positively correlated with brain size and cognitive test performance. Terrestriality had a positive effect on this relationship, but diet quality did not affect it. Unlike a previous study on carnivores, we found that, among primates, brain size and complex manipulations to acquire food underwent correlated evolution, which may have been influenced by terrestriality. Accordingly, our results support the idea of an evolutionary feedback loop between manipulation complexity and cognition in the human lineage, which may have been enhanced by increasingly terrestrial habits.