Complex brains and behaviors have occurred repeatedly within vertebrate classes throughout evolution. What adaptive pressures drive such changes? Both environmental and social features have been implicated in the expansion of select brain structures, particularly the telencephalon. East African cichlid fishes provide a superb opportunity to analyze the social and ecological correlates of neural phenotypes and their evolution. As a result of rapid, recent, and repeated radiations, there are hundreds of closely-related species available for study, with an astonishing diversity in habitat preferences and social behaviors. In this study, we present quantitative ecological, social, and neuroanatomical data for closely-related species from the (monophyletic) Ectodini clade of Lake Tanganyikan cichlid fish. The species differed either in habitat preference or social organization. After accounting for phylogeny with independent contrasts, we find that environmental and social factors differentially affect the brain, with environmental factors showing a broader effect on a range of brain structures compared to social factors. Five out of seven of the brain measures show a relationship with habitat measures. Brain size and cerebellar size are positively correlated with species number (which is correlated with habitat complexity); the medulla and olfactory bulb are negatively correlated with habitat measures. The telencephalon shows a trend toward a positive correlation with rock size. In contrast, only two brain structures, the telencephalon and hypothalamus, are correlated with social factors. Telencephalic size is larger in monogamous species compared to polygamous species, as well as with increased numbers of individuals; monogamy is also associated with smaller hypothalamic size. Our results suggest that selection or drift can act independently on different brain regions as the species diverge into different habitats and social systems.

The mammalian neocortex consists of six layers. By contrast, the reptilian and avian cortices have only three, which are believed to be equivalent to layers I, V and VI of mammals. In mammals, the majority of cortical cell proliferation occurs in the ventricular and subventricular zones, but there are a small number of scattered individual divisions throughout the cortex. Neurogenesis in the cortical subventricular zone is believed to contribute to the supragranular layers. To estimate the proportions of different forms of divisions in reptiles and birds, we examined the site of proliferation in embryonic turtle (stages 18-25) and chick (embryonic days 8-15) brains using phospho-histone H3 (a G2 and M phase marker) immunohistochemistry. In turtle, only few scattered abventricular H3-immunoreactive cells were found outside the ventricular zone; the majority of the H3-immunoreactive cells were located in the ventricular zone throughout the entire turtle brain. Ventricular zone cell proliferation peaks at stages 18 and 20, before an increase of abventricular proliferation at stages 23 and 25. In turtle cortex, however, abventricular proliferation at any given stage never exceeded 17.5 ± 2.47% of the total division and the mitotic profiles did not align parallel to the ventricular zone. Phospho-histone H3 immunoreactivity in embryonic chick brains suggests the lack of subventricular zone in the dorsal cortex, but the presence of subventricular zone in the ventral telencephalon. We were able to demonstrate that the avian subventricular zone is present in both pallial and subpallial regions of the ventral telencephalon during embryonic development, and we characterize the spatial and temporal organization of the subventricular zone. Comparative studies suggest that the subventricular zone was involved in the laminar expansion of the cortex to six layers in mammals from the three-layered cortex found in reptiles and birds. Within mammals, the number of neurons in a cortical column appears to be largely constant; nevertheless, there are considerable differences between the germinal zones in mammalian species. It is yet to be determined whether these elaborations of the subventricular zone may have contributed to cell diversity, tangential expansion or gyrus formation of the neocortex and whether it might have been the major driving force behind the evolution of the six-layered neocortex in mammals.

Modern genomic approaches have facilitated great progress in our understanding of the molecular and genetic underpinnings of ecological and evolutionary processes. Analysis of gene expression through heterologous hybridization in particular has enabled genome-scale studies in many ecologically and evolutionarily interesting species. However, these studies have been hampered by the difficulty of comparing-on a common array platform-gene-expression profiles across species due to sequence divergence altering the dynamics of hybridization. All too often, comparisons of expression profiles across species were limited to contrasting lists of gene or even of just functional categories. Here we review these issues and propose a novel solution. Exploiting the diverse cichlid lineages of East Africa as our model-system, we then present results from an experimental case study that compares the neural gene-expression profiles of males and females of two species that differ in mating system. Using a single microarray platform that contains genes from one species, Astatotilapia burtoni, we conducted a total of 16 direct comparisons for neural gene-expression level between individual males and females from a pair of sister species, the polygynous Enantiopus melanogenys and the monogamous Xenotilapia flavipinnis. Next, we conducted a meta-analysis with previously published data from two different intra-specific expression studies to determine whether sex-specific neural gene expression is more closely associated with behavioral phenotype than it is with gonadal sex. Our results indicate that the gene expression profiles are species-specific to a large extent, as relatively few genes show conserved expression patterns associated with either sex. Finally, we describe how competitive genomic DNA hybridizations between the two focal species allow us to assess the degree to which divergence of sequences biases the results. We propose a masking technique that correlates interspecific expression ratios obtained with cDNA with hybridization ratios obtained with genomic DNA for the same set of species and determines threshold sequence divergence to reduce false positives. Our approach should be applicable to a wide range of interesting questions related to the evolution and ecology of gene expression.