New paper: Interactions with conspecific outsiders as drivers of cognitive evolution

Beautiful dwarf mongoose illustrations by wildlife artist Martin Aveling

We have a new perspectives article out, proposing that interactions with rival outsiders could help explain the large amount of unexplained variation in brain size between species.

Here's the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18780-3

I've written a blog post on the Nature Ecology and Evolution community website here: ​natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/posts/napoleonic-intelligence-and-the-evolution-of-big-brains