ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015
Cognitive ability is heritable and predicts the success of an alternative mating tactic.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 51 citations in OpenAlex.
- How does cognition determine an individual's fitness? A systematic review of the links between cognition, behaviour and fitness in non-human animals.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Pooled it
- A panel of medaka isogenic lines suggests individual, seasonal, and sexual genetic variation ofFrontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Early-Life Heat Stress Impairs Cognition and Alters Its Covariation With Behaviour in Zebrafish.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Demonstrating the reproductive consequences of cognition: learning from experience.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Linking individual fitness to the evolution of cognition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Does the Post-Natal Social Environment Influence Cognitive Development in a Social Gecko?Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Sex affects the network of covariances between cognitive, behavioral, and physiological traits in guppies.iScience · 2025Article
- Paternity analysis reveals sexual selection on cognitive performance in mosquitofish.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Heritability of cognitive performance in wild Western Australian magpies.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Exploring the interplay between natural and intersexual selection on the evolution of a cognitive trait.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Spatial cognitive ability is associated with transitory movement speed but not straightness during the early stages of exploration.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- Novel DNA methylation marker discovery by assumption-free genome-wide association analysis of cognitive function in twins.Aging cell · 2021Article
- Social competition stimulates cognitive performance in a sex-specific manner.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- The quick are the dead: pheasants that are slow to reverse a learned association survive for longer in the wild.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Linking cognition with fitness in a wild primate: fitness correlates of problem-solving performance and spatial learning ability.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Personality and Cognition: Sociability Negatively Predicts Shoal Size Discrimination Performance in Guppies.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The ability to attract mates, acquire resources for reproduction, and successfully outcompete rivals for fertilizations may make demands on cognitive traits--the mechanisms by which an animal acquires, processes, stores and acts upon information from its environment. Consequently, cognitive traits potentially undergo sexual selection in some mating systems. We investigated the role of cognitive traits on the reproductive performance of male rose bitterling (Rhodeus ocellatus), a freshwater fish with a complex mating system and alternative mating tactics. We quantified the learning accuracy of males and females in a spatial learning task and scored them for learning accuracy. Males were subsequently allowed to play the roles of a guarder and a sneaker in competitive mating trials, with reproductive success measured using paternity analysis. We detected a significant interaction between male mating role and learning accuracy on reproductive success, with the best-performing males in maze trials showing greater reproductive success in a sneaker role than as a guarder. Using a cross-classified breeding design, learning accuracy was demonstrated to be heritable, with significant additive maternal and paternal effects. Our results imply that male cognitive traits may undergo intra-sexual selection.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.