Specializations in cognition generalize across contexts: cowbirds are consistent in nest prospecting and foraging tasks

Abstract

Recently we have found that when prospecting for nests, brood-parasitic female cowbirds (Molothrus ater) vary in their use of personal and social information when selecting a nest (White, Davies, Agyapong, & Seegmiller, 2017, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 284, 1–8), with females that are most accurate at using personal information relying least on social information and vice versa. Here, using these same female subjects, we studied whether their strategies of using social and personal information would generalize to other cognitive tasks. In two experiments we investigated whether females would attend to others when selecting a foraging site. We varied the amount of social information present and the degree of conflict that existed between personal and social information about the location of mealworms hidden in soil. We found consistency in performance within females across nest-prospecting and foraging tasks: females that were most accurate at using personal information when prospecting for nests were also most accurate at using personal information when locating food sites. Also, similar to nest prospecting, the most personally accurate females were the least dependent on social information when personal information was present. Surprisingly, however, when no personal information was present, these accurate females were most responsive to social information. Taken together, these studies suggest that females weigh the relative value of social and personal information for decisions they make and they use the most valuable information for action.