Congratulations to Terhune lab member Ashly Romero on her recent (and first!) publication on antipredator defenses and brain size in mammals. Along with her undergraduate advisor at California State University Long Beach, Ted Stankowich, Ashly examined the relationship between how animals defend themselves (for example, with quills or shells) and brain size. Their results indicate that the more defended an animal, the smaller their brain.

You can find a write-up of the article here: https://phys.org/…/2017-01-nature-tradeoffs-brawn-brains-lo…