Pattern and process in hominin brain size evolution are scale-dependent

Proc Biol Sci. 2018 Feb 28;285(1873):20172738. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2017.2738.

Abstract

A large brain is a defining feature of modern humans, yet there is no consensus regarding the patterns, rates and processes involved in hominin brain size evolution. We use a reliable proxy for brain size in fossils, endocranial volume (ECV), to better understand how brain size evolved at both clade- and lineage-level scales. For the hominin clade overall, the dominant signal is consistent with a gradual increase in brain size. This gradual trend appears to have been generated primarily by processes operating within hypothesized lineages-64% or 88% depending on whether one uses a more or less speciose taxonomy, respectively. These processes were supplemented by the appearance in the fossil record of larger-brained Homo species and the subsequent disappearance of smaller-brained Australopithecus and Paranthropus taxa. When the estimated rate of within-lineage ECV increase is compared to an exponential model that operationalizes generation-scale evolutionary processes, it suggests that the observed data were the result of episodes of directional selection interspersed with periods of stasis and/or drift; all of this occurs on too fine a timescale to be resolved by the current human fossil record, thus producing apparent gradual trends within lineages. Our findings provide a quantitative basis for developing and testing scale-explicit hypotheses about the factors that led brain size to increase during hominin evolution.

Keywords: endocranial volume; evolutionary mode; hominin evolution; macroevolution; microevolution; phenotypic evolution.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Biological Evolution*
  • Brain / anatomy & histology*
  • Hominidae / anatomy & histology*
  • Organ Size

Associated data

  • figshare/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4001082
  • Dryad/10.5061/dryad.c30g9