Mammals that have evolved more developed brains tend to have a smaller size difference between males and females of that species, according to new research.
In many mammal species, the males can be bigger than the females , a trait called sexual size dimorphism . For example, male elephant seals are around three times bigger than females. In contrast, dolphins have no difference in sizes between the sexes. Humans are somewhere in between, with the average male being larger than the average female, but across the population there is an overlap.
Therefore, this could also mean that those species with very little difference in sizes between males and females had bigger gene families associated with brain development., the authors suggest that in species with a large SSD, traits such as the sense of smell could be important for identifying mates and territories.
"This could mean that those species with a small SSD have bigger gene families associated with brain function and tend to show more complex behaviours such as biparental care and monogamous breeding systems. In future work, the researchers want to investigate how testes size impacts the evolution of mammals' genomes.Benjamin Padilla-Morales, Alin P. Acuña-Alonzo, Huseyin Kilili, Atahualpa Castillo-Morales, Karina Díaz-Barba, Kathryn H. Maher, Laurie Fabian, Evangelos Mourkas, Tamás Székely, Martin-Alejandro Serrano-Meneses, Diego Cortez, Sergio Ancona, Araxi O. Urrutia.
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