History and future of comparative analyses in sleep research
The comparative methods of evolutionary biology are a useful tool for investigating the functions of sleep. These techniques can help determine whether experimental results, derived from a single or few species, apply broadly across a specified group of animals. In this way, comparative analysis is a powerful complement to experimentation. The variation in the time […]
Amygdala Size and Hypothalamus Size Predict Social Play Frequency in Nonhuman Primates: A Comparative Analysis Using Independent Contrasts
The amygdala and hypothalamus become sexually differentiated by gonadal hormones giving rise to sexually differentiated behaviors, which include play behavior. Phylogenetic comparative analyses test for relationships between social play and brain structure volumes. Relative volume of the amygdala and hypothalamus correlated with social play, but not nonsocial play, even after controlling for the size of […]
Hierarchical steepness, counter-aggression, and macaque social style scale
Nonhuman primates show remarkable variation in several aspects of social structure. One way to characterize this variation in the genus Macaca is through the concept of social style, which is based on the observation that several social traits appear to covary with one another in a linear or at least continuous manner. In practice, macaques […]