Solving problems increases provisioning efficiency, enhancing reproductive success in male great tits

Abstract

The ecological and selective processes acting on cognitive traits have received recent attention because of the potentially key role of cognition in rapid behavioural adjustments in response to environmental variation. Innovation, a cognitive process involved in the development of new behaviour, has been linked to fitness in several species but the proximate mechanisms explaining such links are still unknown. We investigated whether problem-solving performance, a proxy of innovation ability, predicts provisioning performance (provisioning rate, prey number, size and type) and used path analyses to explore whether problem-solving was related to reproductive success (number of nestlings, nestling survival) through provisioning performance in 107 female and 92 male great tits (Parus major). Solvers delivered prey at a higher rate and brought a higher estimated prey biomass to their nestlings than non-solvers. Path analyses confirmed this link in both sexes, and showed that, in turn, higher provisioning rate underlay higher reproductive success but only in males. Our study highlights the role of problem-solving performance in provisioning performance as a potential underlying mechanism linking innovation to reproductive success, and that this mechanism could be sex dependent. These results support the hypothesis of the adaptive value of problem-solving ability in the context of foraging ecology.