Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Evo-devo dynamics of hominin brain size

View ORCID ProfileMauricio González-Forero
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.20.533421
Mauricio González-Forero
1School of Biology, University of St Andrews, Dyers Brae, St Andrews, KY16 9TH, Fife, UK
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Mauricio González-Forero
  • For correspondence: mgf3@st-andrews.ac.uk
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Data/Code
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Brain size tripled in the human lineage over four million years, but why this occurred remains uncertain. To advance our understanding of what caused hominin-brain expansion, I mechanistically replicate it in-silico by modelling the evolutionary and developmental (evo-devo) dynamics of hominin-brain size. I show that, starting from australop-ithecine brain and body sizes, the model recovers the evolution of brain and body sizes of seven hominin species, the evolution of the hominin brain-body allometry, and major patterns of human development and evolution. Analysis shows that in this model the brain expands because it is “socio-genetically” correlated with developmentally late preovulatory ovarian follicles, not because brain size is directly selected for. The socio-genetic correlation causing the recovered hominin brain expansion is generated over development by ecology and possibly culture. Thus, in this model, direct selection that does not favour brain expansion provides a force that developmental constraints divert causing hominin-brain expansion.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • This is a major revision. The whole text has been revised for clarity and conciseness. The Result section has been reordered to read more naturally. Additional results for the afarensis scenario have been included. Terminology that can be misinterpreted has been removed (e.g., ``drive'' or ``creative''). ``Human'' in the context of brain expansion is now ``hominin'', including in the title, for added precision. The original version contained a Box 1, which has been removed and the new Fig. 5 more accurately describes the fitness landscape. The choice of ancestral genotypic traits used to initialise the numerical solutions has been improved. All figures and supplementary files have been revised for conciseness and clarity. A new Table 1 has been added, listing the values of key parameters.

  • https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8283261

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted August 28, 2023.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Data/Code
Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Evo-devo dynamics of hominin brain size
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Evo-devo dynamics of hominin brain size
Mauricio González-Forero
bioRxiv 2023.03.20.533421; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.20.533421
Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Evo-devo dynamics of hominin brain size
Mauricio González-Forero
bioRxiv 2023.03.20.533421; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.20.533421

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Evolutionary Biology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4684)
  • Biochemistry (10361)
  • Bioengineering (7680)
  • Bioinformatics (26337)
  • Biophysics (13533)
  • Cancer Biology (10692)
  • Cell Biology (15445)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (8498)
  • Ecology (12823)
  • Epidemiology (2067)
  • Evolutionary Biology (16867)
  • Genetics (11401)
  • Genomics (15481)
  • Immunology (10619)
  • Microbiology (25223)
  • Molecular Biology (10225)
  • Neuroscience (54478)
  • Paleontology (402)
  • Pathology (1668)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2897)
  • Physiology (4345)
  • Plant Biology (9250)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1586)
  • Synthetic Biology (2558)
  • Systems Biology (6781)
  • Zoology (1466)