Great tits who remember more accurately have difficulty forgetting, but variation is not driven by environmental harshness.

ABSTRACT: The causes of individual variation in memory are poorly understood in wild animals. Harsh environments with sparse or rapidly changing food resources are hypothesized to favour more accurate spatial memory to allow animals to return to previously visited patches when current patches are depleted. A potential cost of more accurate spatial memory is proactive interference, where accurate memories block the formation of new memories. This relationship between spatial memory, proactive interference, and harsh environments has only been studied in scatter-hoarding animals. We compare spatial memory accuracy and proactive interference performance of non-scatter hoarding great tits (Parus major) from high and low elevations where harshness increases with elevation. In contrast to studies of scatt

SUBMITTER: Hermer E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8114932 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature