Preface Brain Behav Evol 2019;93:55–56 Increasing Species Diversity in Neuroscience Research: How and Why? Georg F. Striedter a Todd M. Preuss b a Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA; b Division of Neuropharmacology and Neurologic Diseases, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA Published online: August 15, 2019 Prof. Georg F. Striedter Department of Neurobiology and Behavior University of California Irvine, 2205 McGaugh Hill Irvine, CA 92697-4550 (USA) E-Mail georg.striedter @gmail.com © 2019 S. Karger AG, Basel E-Mail karger@karger.com www.karger.com/bbe DOI: 10.1159/000501332 This is an interesting time in comparative neurobiol- ogy. In some respects, pessimism is warranted. It is un- fortunate, for example, that support for non-human pri- mate research has diminished substantially in the USA, while studies on a single “model” species less closely re- lated to humans – the laboratory mouse – has come to dominate neuroscience. Moreover, the heavy emphasis on mice, endorsed by funding agencies that broadly ac- cept the assumption that results in mice will translate to treatments for human disorders, leaves little room for truly comparative studies conducted in a phylogenetic framework – including the search for alternative models that might prove useful for specific purposes. On a more optimistic note, Japan is investing heavily in research on marmoset monkeys, while China is boosting research on macaques. Moreover, comparative genomic studies are flourishing across the globe, and rapid technical advances increasingly enable researchers to manipulate the ge- nomes of many different species, greatly facilitating both evo-devo and neuroethological research. Against this backdrop, we organized the 30th Karger Workshop and this Special Issue to examine the how and why of species choice in neuroscience research. To that end, we invited a range of scholars who could address the history, theory, and practice of model choice in neurosci- ence. Specifically, we selected Cheryl Logan and Jessica Bolker, as well as the two of us, to discuss the history and theory of how researchers choose their study species. We also invited Barbara Finlay, who emphasized the impor- tance of studying inter- and intraspecific variation, which yields useful principles of variation and has revealed, for example, that laboratory mice are rather deviant in mul- tiple respects. Two additional participants were Melina Hale and Scott Juntti, who focused on the opportunities generated by technical advances in genome manipula- tion, and on the application of those cutting-edge tech- niques in a diverse array of species. Finally, Shreesh My- sore and Pasko Rakic presented new data obtained in two different “model” species, namely barn owls and labora- tory mice, and then related their findings to data from other species. Across this diverse set of perspectives, several themes emerged. One is that the phylogenetic scale and other fal- lacies continue to mislead research. Even the more rea- sonable notion that the degree of similarity between two species falls off with phylogenetic distance is only true on average: many exceptions to the rule exist. For example, marmosets are more similar to humans than macaques in terms of their breeding behavior, even though they are more distant relatives. This finding is likely to surprise most neuroscientists because they tend not to appreciate how common convergent evolution is. Such misconcep- tions about how evolution works should be addressed by giving neuroscientists more robust training in evolution- ary neurobiology and asking them to think seriously about evolution in their research. Another recurring