More smarts, more song: male chickadees with better spatial learning and memory abilities sing more throughout the day

Cognitive abilities may allow flexible responses to variable environments, proving critical to individual survival in many species. When cognitive abilities are associated with survival, we may also expect cognition to be under sexual selection, as mate choice based on cognitive traits can lead to increased fitness. However, evidence for whether and how individuals assess the cognitive abilities of conspecifics is variable and sparse. We investigated whether individual variation in heritable spatial cognitive abilities of food-caching mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli), which rely on spatial memory for overwinter survival, is associated with differences in song production, a known secondary sexual trait. Males that performed better on a spatial learning task produced higher daily song output than males that performed worse, both throughout the day and at dawn. While males that performed worse on the spatial learning task sang less throughout the day, they allocated more of their total songs to the first hour of the day. Performance on a single reversal learning task was not associated with song output. These results suggest that differences in daily song output may serve as a reliable signal for spatial cognitive abilities in mountain chickadees.