Interspecific variation in relative brain size is not correlated with intensity of sexual selection in waterfowl (Anseriformes)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The role of sexual selection in shaping the brain is poorly understood. Although numerous studies have investigated the role of natural selection, relatively few have focussed on the role of sexual selection. Two important factors influencing the intensity of sexual selection are sperm competition and pair bonding and three different hypotheses have been proposed to explain how they could influence relative brain size. (1) The ‘extra-pair mating’ hypothesis predicts that sexual dimorphism in brain size will increase with sperm competition intensity. (2) The ‘Machiavellian intelligence’ hypothesis predicts that brain size will be larger in species with intense sperm competition. (3) The ‘relationship intelligence’ hypothesis predicts that species forming long-term pair bonds will have larger brains. We investigated sexual dimorphism in brain size and tested these three hypotheses in waterfowl by studying correlations between relative brain volume and three measures of sperm competition (testicular mass, phallus length and mating strategy) and pair-bond duration using the modern phylogenetic comparative approach. We found no evidence of sexual dimorphism in brain size in waterfowl after controlling for body mass and found no support for any of the three hypotheses. This suggests that brain size may not be sexually selected in waterfowl, despite evidence of sexual selection pressures on other morphological characters.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".