How have animals managed to maintain metabolically expensive brains given the volatile
and fleeting availability of calories in the natural world? Here we review studies in support of …

Neuronal plasticity can vary remarkably in its form and degree across animal species. Adult
neurogenesis, namely the capacity to produce new neurons from neural stem cells through …

In comparison to other species, the human brain exhibits one of the highest energy
demands relative to body metabolism. It remains unclear whether this heightened energy …

Island vertebrates have evolved a number of morphological, physiological, and life history
characteristics that set them apart from their mainland relatives. However, to date, the …

Humans have evolved culturally and perhaps genetically to be unsustainable. We exhibit a
deep and consistent pattern of short-term resource exploitation behaviours and institutions …

How does domestication affect the brain? This question has broad relevance. Domesticated
animals play important roles in human society, and substantial recent work has addressed …

The evolution of whole-body endothermy occurred independently in dinosaurs and
mammals and was associated with some of the most significant neurocognitive shifts in life's …

Among domestic species, pigs experienced the greatest brain size reduction, but the extent
and factors of this reduction remain unclear. Here, we used the brain endocast volume …

The magnitude of many kinds of biological structures and processes scale with organismal
size, often in regular ways that can be described by power functions. Traditionally, many of …

Identifying the causes and fitness consequences of intraspecific variation in cognitive
performance is fundamental to understand how cognition evolves. Selection may act on …