(Press-News.org) It may seem paradoxical, but being part of a crowd is what makes you unique, according to UCLA life scientists.
Biologists Kimberly Pollard and Daniel Blumstein examined the evolution of individuality —personal uniqueness — by recording alarm-call vocalizations in eight species of rodents that live in social groups of various sizes. They found that the size of the groups strongly predicted the individual uniqueness in the animals' voices: The bigger the group, the more unique each animal's voice typically was and the easier it was to tell individuals apart.
Their research will be published as the cover article in the March 8 print issue of the journal Current Biology and is now available online.
The findings — resulting from six years of research by Blumstein, professor and chair of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA, and Pollard, who conducted the research as a doctoral student in Blumstein's laboratory — may help explain a fact critical to the everyday lives of humans and other social creatures: why everybody is different.
The reason, the researchers say, is due to a "Where's Waldo" effect in which it is difficult to pick one individual out of a crowd, and the bigger the crowd, the harder it is.
"But humans and other social creatures can't just give up when crowds get large," said Pollard, the study's lead author. "We still must be able to identify our friends, our family and our rivals within that crowd."
The species that had to contend with bigger crowds did so with more unique voices, the researchers found. The larger the social group, the easier it was to tell any two individual animals apart.
"Nature has solved the 'Where's Waldo' problem by endowing highly social creatures with more unique features, which helps them find their pals in the crowd," said Pollard, currently a postdoctoral scholar at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory in Maryland.
And if social species — like humans, for example — were to evolve to consistently live in larger and larger groups, this would likely set the stage for the evolution of even greater individuality, the researchers predict.
"The number of individuals that humans must recognize seems to be growing, especially as we become more globally connected and as social groups become less clearly defined," Pollard said. "This is probably increasing the evolutionary pressure on our own individuality.
"This research helps to explain something that is such a core, critical part of our daily experience — our own uniqueness as individuals," she said. "Our results shed light on the underlying evolutionary reasons why we are all so different."
INFORMATION:
Pollard's research was funded by the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program, as well as other scientific organizations.
UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of more than 38,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 328 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.
END
CORVALLIS, Ore. – The terribly destructive earthquake that just hit Christchurch, New Zealand, was only a moderate 6.3 magnitude, but had certain characteristics that offer an important lesson to cities up and down the West Coast of North America that face similar risks, experts say.
The New Zealand earthquake killed dozens – and some fear the death toll may rise to the hundreds – and was an aftershock of the much more powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck that nation last September near the same area, but caused no deaths.
Even though this earthquake was weaker ...
Ignoring the stresses of an unemployed spouse's job search does not bode well for the employed spouse's job productivity or home life, says a University of Colorado Boulder professor.
Associate Professor Maw-Der Foo of CU-Boulder's Leeds School of Business studies employee workplace issues, including those related to interpersonal relationships.
Foo and lead author Professor Zhaoli Song of the National University of Singapore co-authored a paper titled "Unraveling the Stress Crossover Between the Unemployed and Their Spouses," which was published in last month's edition ...
Alexandria, VA – In the back alleys of the world's capitals and the ballrooms of presidential palaces exists a black market that preys on the imagination of some and the greed of others. These black-market items are not of this world: They are moon rocks, collected decades ago by six Apollo missions and three unmanned Soviet missions to the moon.
For the past decade, former NASA investigator Joseph Gutheinz Jr. has been tracking this lunar larceny - with a good bit of success. In the March feature "A Memoir: A Decade-Plus of Tracking Lunar Larceny," Gutheinz recalls some ...
Wildlife conservation strategies may better protect mammals from human activities by treating animals' ranges as multiple interacting small populations, a study finds. Charles Yackulic and colleagues analyzed historical range maps for 47 mammal species to find patterns that might help conservationists assess threats to animal populations from human encroachment. According to the authors, an animal's habitable range contains different ecological niches that can provide valuable clues about the species resiliency. Local environmental factors such as temperature and precipitation ...
TORONTO, Ont., Feb, 23, 2011—Women who take commonly prescribed drugs for osteoporosis known as bisphosphonates for five years or more may be at higher risk of certain kinds of fractures of their thigh bone, a new study has found.
However, the drugs do prevent hip fractures. And, since the overall risk of thigh bone fractures caused by the drugs is low, women at high risk for hip and other osteoporosis-related fractures should not stop taking bisphosphonates, according to researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.
The study ...
Madison, WI FEBRUARY 10, 2011 – Finding employment can be a daunting task. Millions of college graduates, new to the professional work force, face this challenge every year after receiving their degrees. Many have sacrificed and toiled for perfect grades, worked at internships to prepare for careers, and filled their schedules with university affiliated clubs and activities. The belief that these attributes will enhance a resume and impress an employer is widespread, but does it really reflect what employers seek in a new hire?
To answer this question, researchers at ...
CHICAGO --- Paid caregivers make it possible for seniors to remain living in their homes. The problem, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study, is that more than one-third of caregivers had difficulty reading and understanding health-related information and directions. Sixty percent made errors when sorting medications into pillboxes.
The study will be published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. It has been published online.
In a first-of-its-kind study, nearly 100 paid, non-family caregivers were recruited in the Chicago area and their health literacy ...
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered a signaling mechanism in the bacterial ribosome that detects proteins that activate genes for antibiotic resistance.
"The ribosome is one of the most complex molecular machines in the cell," said Alexander Mankin, UIC professor and director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. It is responsible for the production of all proteins in the cell, and in bacteria it is one of the major antibiotic targets.
Understanding how signals are generated and transmitted within the ribosome, Mankin said, ...
Rates of unintended pregnancies and abortions decrease significantly when women receive a one-year supply of oral contraceptives, instead of being prescribed one- or three-month supplies, a UCSF study shows.
Researchers observed a 30 percent reduction in the odds of pregnancy and a 46 percent decrease in the odds of an abortion in women given a one-year supply of birth control pills at a clinic versus women who received the standard prescriptions for one – or three-month supplies.
The researchers speculate that a larger supply of oral contraceptive pills may allow ...
COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Recent data for gas rich galaxies precisely match predictions of a modified theory of gravity know as MOND according to a new analysis by University of Maryland Astronomy Professor Stacy McGaugh. This -- the latest of several successful MOND predictions -- raises new questions about accuracy of the reigning cosmological model of the universe, writes McGaugh in a paper to be published in March in Physical Review Letters.
Modern cosmology says that for the universe to behave as it does, the mass-energy of the universe must be dominated by dark matter ...
