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While every living organism has a genome of some kind (be it RNA, or DNA), there is considerable variation in the sizes of these blueprints. One major factor that impacts genome size is whether the organism is prokaryotic or eukaryotic. In prokaryotes, the genome contains little to no non-coding sequence, such that genes are tightly clustered in groups or operons sequentially along the chromosome. Conversely, the genes in eukaryotes are punctuated by long stretches of non-coding sequence.
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Surgical Size Reduction of Zebrafish for the Study of Embryonic Pattern Scaling
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Pattern and process in hominin brain size evolution are scale-dependent.

Andrew Du1, Andrew M Zipkin2,3, Kevin G Hatala2,4

  • 1Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, Department of Anthropology, The George Washington University, 800 22nd Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052, USA andrewdu@uchicago.edu.

Proceedings. Biological Sciences
|February 23, 2018
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Hominin brain size evolution shows a gradual increase, primarily driven by changes within lineages rather than just species appearance. This pattern suggests evolutionary episodes of selection and stasis over long periods.

Keywords:
endocranial volumeevolutionary modehominin evolutionmacroevolutionmicroevolutionphenotypic evolution

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Area of Science:

  • Paleoanthropology
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Paleoneurology

Background:

  • Large brain size is a key human trait, but evolutionary patterns remain debated.
  • Endocranial volume (ECV) is a reliable proxy for fossil brain size.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To analyze hominin brain size evolution at clade- and lineage-level scales.
  • To understand the rates and processes driving brain size increase in human evolution.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized endocranial volume (ECV) data from the fossil record.
  • Applied statistical analysis to assess evolutionary trends and rates.
  • Compared observed ECV trends with evolutionary models.

Main Results:

  • Overall hominin brain size shows a gradual increase.
  • Intra-lineage evolutionary processes account for the majority of brain size change.
  • Larger-brained *Homo* species and smaller-brained *Australopithecus*/*Paranthropus* extinctions also contributed.
  • Within-lineage ECV increase rates suggest punctuated equilibrium (selection and stasis/drift).

Conclusions:

  • Hominin brain size evolution is characterized by gradual trends within lineages.
  • Evolutionary processes operating at fine timescales, including selection and drift, shaped brain size.
  • The current fossil record obscures these finer-scale evolutionary dynamics.