Vámos Tas I F, McCallum Ella, Shaw Rachael C
School of Biological Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
Anim Cogn. 2025 Apr 10;28(1):28. doi: 10.1007/s10071-025-01950-5.
Research examining how cognitive traits evolve in the wild has focussed on finding evidence of the 'Darwinian holy trinity'- consistent individual variation in cognitive performance that is linked to fitness and has a heritable component. In food-storing birds, there is growing evidence of selection for more accurate spatial memory performance. However, for selection to act on variation in spatial memory performance, it must also have a genetic component. In this study, we used Bayesian animal models to evaluate the heritability of memory performance in a spatial reference memory task in a population of wild toutouwai (North Island robin, Petroica longipes). We also estimated the heritability of variation in measures of the caching behaviour that spatial memory theoretically underpins. We found little evidence of heritability in either spatial memory performance or caching measures, as credible intervals were large with lower bounds close to zero. This result could suggest that individual variation in memory performance and caching behaviour may be primarily due to non-genetic factors. For example, variation in toutouwai spatial memory could be shaped largely by the cognitive demands of altering caching decisions in response to cache theft risk. In this scenario, the underlying mechanisms determining and linking spatial memory and caching behaviour would need to be reconsidered. Alternatively, the large credible intervals for our heritability estimates may be an artefact of small sample size. Therefore, to progress our understanding of how cognition evolves, it is crucial to establish long-term studies in the wild to collect cognitive performance data from as many individuals as possible over successive generations, with the goal of increasing the reliability of heritability estimates.
研究野生环境中认知特征如何演化，主要聚焦于寻找“达尔文神圣三位一体”的证据——认知表现中存在与适应性相关且具有遗传成分的一致个体差异。在储食鸟类中，越来越多的证据表明存在对更精确空间记忆表现的选择。然而，要使选择作用于空间记忆表现的差异，其差异也必须具有遗传成分。在本研究中，我们使用贝叶斯动物模型来评估野生toutouwai（北岛知更鸟，Petroica longipes）群体在空间参考记忆任务中的记忆表现的遗传力。我们还估计了理论上由空间记忆支撑的贮藏行为测量指标的变异遗传力。我们几乎没有发现空间记忆表现或贮藏行为测量指标具有遗传力的证据，因为可信区间很大，下限接近零。这一结果可能表明，记忆表现和贮藏行为的个体差异可能主要是由非遗传因素导致的。例如，toutouwai空间记忆的差异可能很大程度上是由应对贮藏被盗风险而改变贮藏决策的认知需求所塑造的。在这种情况下，就需要重新考虑决定和联系空间记忆与贮藏行为的潜在机制。或者，我们遗传力估计的大可信区间可能是小样本量造成的假象。因此，为了加深我们对认知如何演化的理解，至关重要的是在野外开展长期研究，以便在连续几代中从尽可能多的个体收集认知表现数据，目标是提高遗传力估计的可靠性。
