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The Cultural Brain Hypothesis: How culture drives brain expansion, sociality, and life history.

ABSTRACT: In the last few million years, the hominin brain more than tripled in size. Comparisons across evolutionary lineages suggest that this expansion may be part of a broader trend toward larger, more complex brains in many taxa. Efforts to understand the evolutionary forces driving brain expansion have focused on climatic, ecological, and social factors. Here, building on existing research on learning, we analytically and computationally model the predictions of two closely related hypotheses: The Cultural Brain Hypothesis and the Cumulative Cultural Brain Hypothesis. The Cultural Brain Hypothesis posits that brains have been selected for their ability to store and manage information, acquired through asocial or social learning. The model of the Cultural Brain Hypothesis reveals relationships between brain size, group size, innovation, social learning, mating structures, and the length of the juvenile period that are supported by the existing empirical literature. From this model, we derive a set of predictions-the Cumulative Cultural Brain Hypothesis-for the conditions that favor an autocatalytic take-off characteristic of human evolution. This narrow evolutionary pathway, created by cumulative cultural evolution, may help explain the rapid expansion of human brains and other aspects of our species' life history and psychology.

SUBMITTER: Muthukrishna M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6224031 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The Cultural Brain Hypothesis: How culture drives brain expansion, sociality, and life history.

Muthukrishna Michael M Doebeli Michael M Chudek Maciej M Henrich Joseph J

PLoS computational biology 20181108 11

In the last few million years, the hominin brain more than tripled in size. Comparisons across evolutionary lineages suggest that this expansion may be part of a broader trend toward larger, more complex brains in many taxa. Efforts to understand the evolutionary forces driving brain expansion have focused on climatic, ecological, and social factors. Here, building on existing research on learning, we analytically and computationally model the predictions of two closely related hypotheses: The C ...[more]

PMID: 30408028

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Project description:Background:Dispersal and reproduction are key life-history traits that jointly determine species' potential to expand their distribution, for instance in light of ongoing climate change. These life-history traits are known to be under selection by changing local environmental conditions, but they may also evolve by spatial sorting. While local natural selection and spatial sorting are mainly studied in model organisms, we do not know the degree to which these processes are relevant in the wild, despite their importance to a comprehensive understanding of species' resistance and tolerance to climate change. Methods:The wasp spider Argiope bruennichi has undergone a natural range expansion - from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe during the recent decades. Using reciprocal common garden experiments in the laboratory, we studied differences in crucial traits between replicated core (Southern France) and edge (Baltic States) populations. We tested theoretical predictions of enhanced dispersal (ballooning behaviour) and reproductive performance (fecundity and winter survival) at the expansion front due to spatial sorting and local environmental conditions. Results:Dispersal rates were not consistently higher at the northern expansion front, but were impacted by the overwintering climatic conditions experienced, such that dispersal was higher when spiderlings had experienced winter conditions as occur in their region. Hatching success and winter survival were lower at the range border. In agreement with theoretical predictions, spiders from the northern leading edge invested more in reproduction for their given body size. Conclusions:We found no evidence for spatial sorting leading to higher dispersal in northern range edge populations of A. bruennichi. However, reproductive investment and overwintering survival between core and edge populations differed. These life-history traits that directly affect species' expansion rates seem to have diverged during the recent range expansion of A. bruennichi. We discuss the observed changes with respect to the species' natural history and the ecological drivers associated with range expansion to northern latitudes.

Dataset Information

The Cultural Brain Hypothesis: How culture drives brain expansion, sociality, and life history.

Publications

The Cultural Brain Hypothesis: How culture drives brain expansion, sociality, and life history.

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