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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 12, 2026

Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats

Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats

Published on: February 15, 2015

Developmental constraints on behavioural flexibility.

Kay E Holekamp¹, Eli M Swanson, Page E Van Meter

¹Department of Zoology, Michigan State University, 203 Natural Sciences, MI 48824, USA. holekamp@msu.edu

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences

|April 10, 2013

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Developmental constraints, including maternal androgen effects and morphological adaptations, help explain variations in mammalian behavioral flexibility beyond socioecological factors. This impacts individual and species-level adaptability.

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Area of Science:

Evolutionary biology
Behavioral ecology
Developmental biology

Background:

Socioecological models do not fully explain variations in mammalian behavioral flexibility.
Developmental constraints are proposed as a significant contributing factor.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the role of developmental constraints in mammalian behavioral flexibility.
To examine how maternal effects and morphological adaptations influence behavioral flexibility across species.

Main Methods:

Examined organizational maternal effects of androgens on aggressive behavior in spotted hyaenas.
Compared locomotor and craniofacial adaptations between carnivores and primates.
Conducted phylogenetic analysis of relative brain size evolution.

Main Results:

Maternal androgens influence individual differences in aggressive behavior.
Antagonistic selection on skulls may constrain brain evolvability and behavioral flexibility in carnivores compared to primates.
Primates show greater evolutionary lability in relative brain size than carnivores, suggesting fewer developmental constraints.

Conclusions:

Developmental constraints, stemming from maternal effects and past morphological adaptations, are crucial for understanding mammalian behavioral flexibility.
Considering developmental constraints offers a more comprehensive explanation for behavioral diversity across mammalian taxa.