Fig. 1.

Evolution of ‘mosaicism’ under alternative conditions. a–c Each plot depicts the ‘degree of mosaicism’ (y-axis, defined as the natural log of the ratio between the largest brain component and the smallest brain component in each individual, averaged across the population) as a function of developmental coupling D (x-axis) at the end of a 100-generation simulation run, compiled over 1000 simulation runs, for a population of 100 individuals with an identical D, under different environments, defined by their functional coupling F, with an average benefit to cost ratio (B̅/C) of 1.5 and a mutation step size of 5%. Each data point is the outcome of one simulation run and the black bar indicates the mean of these runs. d Summary of the effects of varying F and B̅/C on the degree of mosaicism when D is 0. See Additional file 1: Figure S2-S4 for full results varying B̅/C and F, iteration numbers and mutation step size