Mate choice is hinged on the fundamental question: which traits to choose and why? This question is key to understanding how genetic variation is maintained in populations subjected to sexual selection, and resolving the so-called lek paradox. Recent work has demonstrated that using correlated strategies, that is, choice mediated by a randomly changing environmental variable is hugely advantageous; it also conjectures that predicting this variable may be advantageous as well, giving rise to chooser intelligence. Here we confirm this hypothesis using individual-based simulation. Several strategies are pitted against each other: choosing based on an external variable that itself changes every few generations; or choosing based on its value the next generations, or, more generally, k generations ahead; as well as random choice. All the strategies except the random choice are costly. Larger values of k consistently win. This shows that if the choice is based on a predictable environmental variable, then it is advantageous to develop the ability to predict it and to base the choice on this variable. Thus, an evolutionary path to chooser intelligence is demonstrated.
Pando et al. (Thu,) studied this question.