ABS 2023
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Seeking smarts: Female chickadees choose extra-pair males with enhanced spatial cognition
Carrie L Branch1, Benjamin R Sonnenberg2, Joseph F Welklin2, Bronwyn G Butcher3, Virginia K Heinen2, Angela M Pitera2, Lauren M Benedict2, Eli S Bridge4, Irby J Lovette3, Mike S Webster3, Vladimir V Pravosudov2. 1Western University, London, ON, Canada; 2University of Nevada, Reno, NV, United States; 3Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States; 4University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, United States

How and why animals exhibit mate choice has�fascinated scientists for ages due to the direct fitness consequences.�Research shows that females prefer to mate with high quality males reflected via secondary sexual traits; however, gaps remain linking primary traits and secondary sexual traits. We assessed mate choice for high quality males by measuring extra-pair paternity and spatial cognitive performance in wild mountain chickadees.�Chickadees are nonmigratory, food-caching birds that rely on specialized spatial cognition to recover food stores and survive montane winters.�Using our long-term field system, we have shown that birds with enhanced spatial cognition experience higher survival and that these spatial abilities have a genetic basis. In the current study, we show that extra-pair males outperform cuckolded social males on a spatial cognitive task and that males that perform better on the spatial cognitive task produce more extra-pair young overall. While the mechanism remains unknown, these results suggest that females assess and choose males with enhanced spatial-cognitive abilities as their extra-pair mates, likely gaining indirect benefits for their offspring.