Performance in cognitive and problem-solving tasks in male spotted bowerbirds does not correlate with mating success

Isden, Jess; Panayi, Carmen; Dingle, Caroline; Madden, Joah R.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2013.07.024

Cited by 124 publications

(150 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…Song quality could be a signal of cognitive ability in general (Spencer and MacDougall-Shackleton 2011;Farrell et al 2015a). To date, there is some support for general cognitive abilities in birds (Keagy et al 2011a;Isden et al 2013), but the experiments presented herein and in another (Boogert et al 2011) do not support this notion. Song quality has been found to not correlate with a general index of cognitive performance (Boogert et al 2011;Keagy et al 2011a).…”

Section: Sex Differences On Auditory Taskscontrasting

confidence: 64%

“…Developmental stress may also, or alternatively, affect associative learning processes and impair the ability to associate a stimulus with a particular outcome. Association learning in songbirds is often studied using similar colour association tasks as the ones presented here (Boogert et al 2011;Amy et al 2012;Isden et al 2013;Kriengwatana et al 2015). The fact that experimental females also commit more within-trial errors on these tasks supports the notion that additional learning processes apart from auditory-specific abilities were affected.…”

Section: Auditory Learning Is Impaired By Developmental Stress In Femmentioning

confidence: 82%

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Developmental stress impairs performance on an association task in male and female songbirds, but impairs auditory learning in females only

Farrell

Morgan

MacDougall‐Shackleton

2015

Anim Cogn

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In songbirds, early-life environments critically shape song development. Many studies have demonstrated that developmental stress impairs song learning and the development of song-control regions of the brain in males. However, song has evolved through signaller-receiver networks and the effect stress has on the ability to receive auditory signals is equally important, especially for females who use song as an indicator of mate quality. Female song preferences have been the metric used to evaluate how developmental stress affects auditory learning, but preferences are shaped by many non-cognitive factors and preclude the evaluation of auditory learning abilities in males. To determine whether developmental stress specifically affects auditory learning in both sexes, we subjected juvenile European starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, to either an ad libitum or an unpredictable food supply treatment from 35 to 115 days of age. In adulthood, we assessed learning of both auditory and visual discrimination tasks. Females reared in the experimental group were slower than females in the control group to acquire a relative frequency auditory task, and slower than their male counterparts to acquire an absolute frequency auditory task. There was no difference in auditory performance between treatment groups for males. However, on the colour association task, birds from the experimental group committed more errors per trial than control birds. There was no correlation in performance across the cognitive tasks. Developmental stress did not affect all cognitive processes equally across the sexes. Our results suggest that the male auditory system may be more robust to developmental stress than that of females.

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Section: Sex Differences On Auditory Taskscontrasting

confidence: 64%

Section: Auditory Learning Is Impaired By Developmental Stress In Femmentioning

confidence: 82%

Developmental stress impairs performance on an association task in male and female songbirds, but impairs auditory learning in females only

Farrell

Morgan

MacDougall‐Shackleton

2015

Anim Cogn

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“…For example, innovation can increase survival by facilitating the exploitation of new food sources during harsh conditions (Kozlovsky et al, 2015;Edmunds et al, 2016). It can also enhance mating and reproductive success by facilitating the display of a new behavior or phenotypic trait favored during mate choice (Keagy et al, 2009;Mateos-Gonzalez et al, 2011;Isden et al, 2013) or the exploitation of resources that will directly influence young growth and/or survival (Cole et al, 2012;Cauchard et al, 2013). The first empirical evidence for a positive association between innovation and reproductive success in the wild came from two studies conducted on two different populations of great tits (Parus major) (Cole et al, 2012;Cauchard et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Experimental Test of a Causal Link between Problem-Solving Performance and Reproductive Success in Wild Great Tits

et al. 2017

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Recent studies have uncovered relationships between measures of various cognitive performances and proxies of fitness such as reproductive success in non-human animals. However, to better understand the evolution of cognition in the wild, we still have to determine the causality of these relationships and the underlying mechanisms. The cognitive ability of an individual may directly influence its ability to raise many and/or high quality young through for example its provisioning ability. Conversely, large and/or high quality broods may lead to high parental motivation to solve problems related to their care. To answer this question, we manipulated reproductive success through brood size and measured subsequent problem-solving performance in wild great tit parents. Our results show that brood size manipulation did not affect the probability to solve the task. Moreover, solver pairs fledged more young than non-solver pairs independently of brood size treatment in one of the two experimental years and they showed higher nestling provisioning rate in both years. Overall, it shows that problem-solving performance was not driven by motivation and suggest that problem-solvers may achieve higher fledging success through higher provisioning rates. Our study constitutes a first key step toward a mechanistic understanding of the consequences of innovation ability for individual fitness in the wild.

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“…In bowerbirds, species that construct more complex courtship bowers have larger brains [Madden, 2001]. This appears to be related to both cognitive and motor behaviours as male bowerbirds that perform better in motor-dependent cognitive tasks have greater reproductive success [Keagy et al, 2011, but see Isden et al, 2013] and bower complexity is related not only to large brains but also specifically to expansion of the cerebellum [Day et al, 2005], a brain region involved in coordination and motor planning.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Acrobatic Courtship Display Coevolves with Brain Size in Manakins (Pipridae)

Lindsay¹,

Houck²,

Giuliano³

et al. 2015

Brain Behav Evol

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Acrobatic display behaviour is sexually selected in manakins (Pipridae) and can place high demands on many neural systems. Manakin displays vary across species in terms of behavioural complexity, differing in number of unique motor elements, production of mechanical sounds, cooperation between displaying males, and construction of the display site. Historically, research emphasis has been placed on neurological specializations for vocal aspects of courtship, and less is known about the control of physical, non-vocal displays. By examining brain evolution in relation to extreme acrobatic feats such as manakin displays, we can vastly expand our knowledge of how sexual selection acts on motor behaviour. We tested the hypothesis that sexual selection for complex motor displays has selected for larger brains across the Pipridae. We found that display complexity positively predicts relative brain weight (adjusted for body size) after controlling for phylogeny in 12 manakin species and a closely related flycatcher. This evidence suggests that brain size has evolved in response to sexual selection to facilitate aspects of display such as motor, sensorimotor, perceptual, and cognitive abilities. We show, for the first time, that sexual selection for acrobatic motor behaviour can drive brain size evolution in avian species and, in particular, a family of suboscine birds.

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Performance in cognitive and problem-solving tasks in male spotted bowerbirds does not correlate with mating success

Cited by 124 publications

References 72 publications

Developmental stress impairs performance on an association task in male and female songbirds, but impairs auditory learning in females only

Developmental stress impairs performance on an association task in male and female songbirds, but impairs auditory learning in females only

An Experimental Test of a Causal Link between Problem-Solving Performance and Reproductive Success in Wild Great Tits

Acrobatic Courtship Display Coevolves with Brain Size in Manakins (Pipridae)

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