IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/beheco/v23y2012i2p448-456..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cognitive ability and the evolution of multiple behavioral display traits

Author

Listed:
  • Jason Keagy
  • Jean-François Savard
  • Gerald Borgia

Abstract

Males of many species have multiple behavioral display traits. Females may be able to use these multiple behavioral display traits together to evaluate a male's overall cognitive ability, which may be related to his genetic quality. It is also possible that individual behavioral display traits indicate unique aspects of male quality possibly related to cognitive performance. We tested predictions of these 2 hypotheses in satin bowerbirds, Ptilonorhynchus violaceus, a species with a large number of behavioral display traits involved in mate choice. We calculated 2 integrative measures of male performance on 6 cognitive tasks. An aggregate measure of male display quality (produced from 4 behavioral display traits) was correlated with one of these measures of overall cognitive ability and with mating success. Multiple behavioral display traits used together, rather than individually, more accurately predicted this measure of overall cognitive ability. In addition, we found some support for the hypothesis that separate display traits may indicate different aspects of male quality. One display trait indicated male age and possibly survivability. These results suggest that multiple behavioral display traits may have evolved in part because of the large variety of information they can convey about male quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Jason Keagy & Jean-François Savard & Gerald Borgia, 2012. "Cognitive ability and the evolution of multiple behavioral display traits," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 23(2), pages 448-456.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:23:y:2012:i:2:p:448-456.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arr211
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gerald Borgia & Marc Egeth & J. Albert Uy & Gail L. Patricelli, 2004. "Juvenile infection and male display: testing the bright male hypothesis across individual life histories," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 15(5), pages 722-728, September.
    2. Genevieve M. Kozak & Janette W. Boughman, 2009. "Learned conspecific mate preference in a species pair of sticklebacks," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 20(6), pages 1282-1288.
    3. Barbara Ballentine & Jeremy Hyman & Stephen Nowicki, 2004. "Vocal performance influences female response to male bird song: an experimental test," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 15(1), pages 163-168, January.
    4. Neeltje J. Boogert & Tim W. Fawcett & Louis Lefebvre, 2011. "Mate choice for cognitive traits: a review of the evidence in nonhuman vertebrates," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 22(3), pages 447-459.
    5. Janine M. Wojcieszek & James A. Nicholls & Anne W. Goldizen, 2007. "Stealing behavior and the maintenance of a visual display in the satin bowerbird," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 18(4), pages 689-695.
    6. Gail L. Patricelli & J. Albert C. Uy & Gerald Borgia, 2004. "Female signals enhance the efficiency of mate assessment in satin bowerbirds (Ptilonorhynchus violaceus)," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 15(2), pages 297-304, March.
    7. Linda L. Bischoff & Barbara Tschirren & Heinz Richner, 2009. "Long-term effects of early parasite exposure on song duration and singing strategy in great tits," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 20(2), pages 265-270.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alex Thornton & Jess Isden & Joah R. Madden, 2014. "Toward wild psychometrics: linking individual cognitive differences to fitness," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 25(6), pages 1299-1301.
    2. Stephen Pruett-Jones & Aviad Heifetz, 2012. "Optimal marauding in bowerbirds," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 23(3), pages 607-614.
    3. R. Croston & C.L. Branch & D.Y. Kozlovsky & R. Dukas & V.V. Pravosudov, 2015. "Heritability and the evolution of cognitive traits," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 26(6), pages 1447-1459.
    4. Jeffrey S McKinnon & Nick Hamele & Nicole Frey & Jennifer Chou & Leia McAleavey & Jess Greene & Windi Paulson, 2012. "Male Choice in the Stream-Anadromous Stickleback Complex," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(6), pages 1-8, June.
    5. Javier Sierro & Selvino R. Kort & Ian R. Hartley, 2023. "Sexual selection for both diversity and repetition in birdsong," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-13, December.
    6. Emily R.A. Cramer, 2013. "Vocal deviation and trill consistency do not affect male response to playback in house wrens," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 24(2), pages 412-420.
    7. Demetra Andreou & Christophe Eizaguirre & Thomas Boehm & Manfred Milinski, 2017. "Mate choice in sticklebacks reveals that immunogenes can drive ecological speciation," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 28(4), pages 953-961.
    8. Nathan W Bailey & Lucas Marie-Orleach & Allen J Moore & Leigh SimmonsEditor-in-Chief, 2018. "Indirect genetic effects in behavioral ecology: does behavior play a special role in evolution?," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 29(1), pages 1-11.
    9. Katarzyna Galasinska & Aleksandra Szymkow, 2021. "The More Fertile, the More Creative: Changes in Women’s Creative Potential across the Ovulatory Cycle," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(10), pages 1-15, May.
    10. MacKinlay, Regan D. & Shaw, Rachael C., 2019. "Male New Zealand robin (Petroica longipes) song repertoire size does not correlate with cognitive performance in the wild," Intelligence, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 25-33.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:23:y:2012:i:2:p:448-456.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/beheco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.