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Supplementary material from "The evolution of quantitative sensitivity"

Version 2 2021-11-30, 01:44
Version 1 2021-11-18, 11:30
Posted on 2021-11-30 - 01:44
The ability to represent approximate quantities appears to be phylogenetically widespread, but the selective pressures and proximate mechanisms favouring this ability remain unknown. We analysed quantity discrimination data from 672 subjects across 33 bird and mammal species, using a novel Bayesian model that combined phylogenetic regression with a model of number psychophysics and random effect components. This allowed us to combine data from 49 studies and calculate the Weber fraction (a measure of quantity representation precision) for each species. We then examined which cognitive, socioecological and biological factors were related to variance in Weber fraction. We found contributions of phylogeny to quantity discrimination performance across taxa. Of the neural, socioecological and general cognitive factors we tested, cortical neuron density and domain-general cognition were the strongest predictors of Weber fraction, controlling for phylogeny. Our study is a new demonstration of evolutionary constraints on cognition, as well as of a relation between species-specific neuron density and a particular cognitive ability.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Systems neuroscience through the lens of evolutionary theory’.

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Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

AUTHORS (17)

  • Margaret A. H. Bryer
    Sarah E. Koopman
    Jessica F. Cantlon
    Steven T. Piantadosi
    Evan L. MacLean
    Joseph M. Baker
    Michael J. Beran
    Sarah M. Jones
    Kerry E. Jordan
    Salif Mahamane
    Andreas Nieder
    Bonnie M. Perdue
    Friederike Range
    Jeffrey R. Stevens
    Masaki Tomonaga
    Dorottya J. Ujfalussy
    Jennifer Vonk
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