Zou Yuqi, Song Zitan, Chen Jiani, Sun Yuehua, Griesser Michael
Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
Department of Collective Behavior, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, 78464, Konstanz, Germany.
Anim Cogn. 2025 Feb 4;28(1):9. doi: 10.1007/s10071-024-01923-0.
Foraging skills influence food intake and could therefore also play a role in mate choice decision. Previous empirical work has shown that individuals benefit from being in groups that include individuals with a variety of foraging skills as this increases foraging success. This idea, formalized in the skill-pool hypothesis, may extend to mate choice. Diverse foraging skills can expand the foraging niche of a pair and benefit offspring through enhanced parental provisioning, and exposure to a broader foraging skillset. To test this idea, we trained captive female and male budgerigars to solve one of two different novel foraging puzzle boxes. Then, females simultaneously observed two males that could solve either the same or the other box, and assessed female preferences in a binary mate choice apparatus. Females preferred males with foraging skills that differed from their own, independent of the skill type and the number of times males solved the foraging puzzle. These findings show that foraging skills can influence social preferences, including in a mate choice context, and support intraspecific diversity in foraging skills.
觅食技能会影响食物摄入量，因此也可能在配偶选择决策中发挥作用。先前的实证研究表明，个体处于包含具有各种觅食技能个体的群体中会受益，因为这会提高觅食成功率。这个在技能库假说中被形式化的观点，可能也适用于配偶选择。多样的觅食技能可以扩大配偶双方的觅食生态位，并通过增强亲代抚育以及接触更广泛的觅食技能集而使后代受益。为了验证这一观点，我们训练了圈养的雌性和雄性虎皮鹦鹉来解决两种不同的新型觅食拼图盒中的一种。然后，雌性同时观察了两个能够解决相同或另一种拼图盒的雄性，并在二元配偶选择装置中评估雌性的偏好。雌性更喜欢具有与其自身不同觅食技能的雄性，而与技能类型以及雄性解决觅食拼图的次数无关。这些发现表明，觅食技能可以影响社会偏好，包括在配偶选择的背景下，并支持觅食技能的种内多样性。
