Early life learning ability predicts adult social structure, with potential implications for fitness outcomes in the wild

1. Social environments influence important ecological processes and can determine
how selection acts on traits. Cognitive abilities can shape these social environments
and in turn, affect individuals' fitness.
2. To understand how cognitive abilities evolve, we need to understand the complex
interplay between an individual's cognitive abilities, the social environment that
they inhabit and the fitness consequences of these relationships.
3. We measured the associative learning ability of pheasant chicks, Phasianus colchicus,
then released them into the wild where we quantified their social position by observing
their associations at feeding stations and monitored the number of days survived.
4. We observed disassortative mixing by learning performance at the population
level, and poor learners had more associates than good learners. Learning was
beneficial for survival when focal individuals had fewer than four associates, but
survival probability across learning abilities e...