The development of social and cognitive skills in songbirds

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The study of animal cognition has been very successful in characterizing a wide variety of information processing abilities across diverse taxa. One critical need now is to understand how these discrete cognitive abilities integrate within and across individuals to develop adaptive behaviour. We propose such an integration in studying the cognitive and social abilities of brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater). We will be bringing together insights from two of the main research areas in my lab: (1) the cognitive abilities female cowbirds use to select nests for parasitism, and (2) the examination of social skills that lead to reproductive success. While we have traditionally kept these two areas of research separate, new results are revealing that they are in fact related to each other and provide new insights for problem-solving, social learning, and reproductive success. We have found that when prospecting for nests, females display a remarkable ability to evaluate the characteristics of the host's eggs in nests to inform their parasitism decisions. We have also found there is substantial individual variation among females in their ability to select the most viable nest. Females also depend on social information when selecting a nest but this dependence on social information is also individually variable, with individuals most accurate at assessing nests being the ones least likely to be influenced by others. Taken together, these results have revealed that cognition and social behaviour are linked, suggesting that cognitive skills may play an important role in organizing social groups and ultimately relating to the social skills so integral to reproductive success. The proposed experiments seek to understand the role cognition plays in affecting group-level processes and, in addition, how social interactions in turn can modify the development of cognitive abilities. We will be examining an array of cognitive skills of captive cowbirds to understand the modularity and connectivity of different cognitive abilities. We will create groups of birds that vary in their cognitive abilities to examine what group-level processes emerge from such `cultures'. We will then examine the development of cognitive and social skills in young birds. Finally, we will expose young birds to different cognitive cultures to examine whether cognitive skills can be modified by social experiences. Taken together, these experiments will examine how cognitive skills function for individuals living in different social contexts. We will examine how skills generalize across tasks and contexts, how they integrate with the skills of others to influence the overall social network within flocks, how groups affect reproductive success, and how young individuals can be influenced by different cognitive cultures. This work will provide new insights into the mechanisms and function of mental skills and the role the social environment plays in honing these skills.