Natural selection and spatial memory link shown in mountain chickadee research

University of Nevada, Reno research results provide the first direct evidence for natural selection on spatial cognition in wild food-caching mountain chickadees in one-of-a-kind in the world high-altitude field lab. Credit: Vladimir Pravosudov, University of Nevada, Reno Chickadees with better learning and memory skills, needed to find numerous food caches, are more likely to survive their first winter, a long-term study of mountain chickadees has found. Enhanced spatial cognition and brain power evolves via natural selection , an elaborate study of hundreds of mountain chickadees in the Sierra Nevada has found. Using passive integrative transponder (PIT) tags in combination with radio frequency identification-equipped feeders, scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno have tracked feeding behaviors and measured learning and memory of these non-migratory birds that live year-round in the high-elevation forest northwest of Truckee, California. "This is a unique program, set in the wilderness, so we get unique results," Vladimir Pravosudov, lead researcher and biology professor at the University’s College of Science, said. "Over the years, we’ve banded and tagged thousands of chickadees and observed their spatial cognition using custom-designed and built feeders that allow us to track how individuals learn and remember. And now we have tested whether individuals with better learning and memory performance are more likely to survive the winter." Ben Sonnenberg, a doctoral student in the laboratory of Pravosudov (as a part of the Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology Graduate program) is the lead author, and Pravosudov is a corresponding author, on a scientific paper, based on the research, published Feb. 7 in the journal Current Biology . ‘We’re looking at how natural selection can generate differences in the birds living in different environments, and we now have direct evidence that selection is acting on chickadees’ spatial cognition, which is needed to find tens of […]

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