A complex social life serves as one of the main driving forces behind the evolution of higher
cognitive abilities in vertebrates. In birds, however, data are primarily derived from captive …

The behavioural demands of group living and foraging have been implicated in both
evolutionary and plastic changes in brain size. Desert locusts show extreme phenotypic …

Complex social life has been characterized as cognitively challenging and recently, social
relationships such as long-term social bonds and alliances have been identified as key …

Despite decades of research, much uncertainty remains regarding the selection pressures
responsible for brain size variation. Whilst the influential social brain hypothesis once …

Changes in the relative size of brain regions are often dependent on experience and
environmental stimulation, which includes an animal's social environment. Some studies …

The 'expensive tissue hypothesis' predicts a size trade‐off between the brain and other
energetically costly organs. A specific version of this hypothesis, the 'expensive sexual …

A social lifestyle is often assumed to be more complex than a solitary one, due to social
demands that may require increased cognitive capabilities. These nested assumptions …

The Eurocentric (or rather Western European) outlook on cultural evolution envisioned a
sharp demarcation between the phenomena grouped under the title Middle Paleolithic (ie …

We compare four honeybee and one bumblebee species with similar behaviors and
ecological requirements but large differences in body size. The bees show allometric brain …

The recognition of interaction partners is useful in various contexts of social life like mate
guarding, investment in offspring, territorial defence and/or inbreeding avoidance. The …