By Susan Milius
For size, brains matter.
Brainpower by itself seems to be a force in evolution, at least in developing diversity of body size in birds, two researchers report in the August American Naturalist.
Bird families with relatively big brains, such as parrots and woodpeckers, tend to have diversified a bit faster than less-endowed species, report Daniel Sol of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Trevor Price of the University of Chicago.