ArticleNature ecology & evolution2023
Spatial memory predicts home range size and predation risk in pheasants.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines 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
- The Human Shield Hypothesis: Does Predator Avoidance of Humans Create Refuges for Prey?Ecology letters · 2025Pooled it
- Neuroactive Pollution Disrupts Cognition in Fish by Causing Sex-Specific Effects on Spatial Learning.Environmental science & technology · 2026Article
- Wild canids and felids differ in their reliance on reused travel routeways.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Proactive and reactive movement behaviours shape the antipredator sequence in a large herbivore.Movement ecology · 2025Article
- What could evolve in the evolution of memory?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The evolutionary puzzle of cognition: challenges and insights from individual-based studies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Living on the edge: the evolution of spatial cognition in food-caching chickadees.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Linking individual fitness to the evolution of cognition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Article
- Impacts of predation risk on learning and memory of free-living mice.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Identifying signals of memory from observations of animal movements.Movement ecology · 2024Review
- Sick without signs. Subclinical infections reduce local movements, alter habitat selection, and cause demographic shifts.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Spatial roost networks and resource selection of female wild turkeys.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Prospecting during egg laying informs incubation recess movements of eastern wild turkeys.Movement ecology · 2024Article
- Land cover and space use influence coyote carnivory: evidence from stable-isotope analysis.PeerJ · 2024Article
- Robust Time-of-Arrival Location Estimation Algorithms for Wildlife Tracking.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Most animals confine their activities to a discrete home range, long assumed to reflect the fitness benefits of obtaining spatial knowledge about the landscape. However, few empirical studies have linked spatial memory to home range development or determined how selection operates on spatial memory via the latter's role in mediating space use. We assayed the cognitive ability of juvenile pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) reared under identical conditions before releasing them into the wild. Then, we used high-throughput tracking to record their movements as they developed their home ranges, and determined the location, timing and cause of mortality events. Individuals with greater spatial reference memory developed larger home ranges. Mortality risk from predators was highest at the periphery of an individual's home range in areas where they had less experience and opportunity to obtain spatial information. Predation risk was lower in individuals with greater spatial memory and larger core home ranges, suggesting selection may operate on spatial memory by increasing the ability to learn about predation risk across the landscape. Our results reveal that spatial memory, determined from abstract cognitive assays, shapes home range development and variation, and suggests predation risk selects for spatial memory via experience-dependent spatial variation in mortality.
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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.