Environmental recurrence changes the transmission advantage of private memory in a finite-budget population model

Using stored information may help a strategy spread without improving every population-performance endpoint. We distinguish these outcomes in an abstract 32-individual, 32-bit population model with private one-record memory, inherited strategy labels and an equal objective-evaluation budget. A historical probe and a fresh random probe occupy the same candidate slot. Their separate-introduction ranking reverses between alternating recurrent and independent targets, and an independent cohort reproduces both directions. Intermittent recurrence preserves a historical transmission advantage under two survival rules; direct competition and resident-policy preparation extend the comparison. A crossed experiment then holds prepared populations fixed while changing their future target law. After partial-recurrence preparation, future partial recurrence increases the matched historical-use founder effect by 22.76 percentage points relative to renewed targets (approximate pointwise 95% block-bootstrap interval, 17.12 to 28.95). A prospectively specified, independently generated cohort reproduces that direction, with 16.20 points (11.23 to 21.02), and also supports the corresponding contrast after renewed-target preparation. Cohorts are not pooled. Preparation interactions remain partly unresolved, and most individual memory-use introductions disappear. In the new partial-recurrence cohort, switching from historical to fresh use lowers the matched founder effect by 2.74 points while improving terminal population accuracy by 0.32 points; every introduced fresh-use founder nevertheless disappears in that sample. Fixed-cost introductions in earlier non-retrieving backgrounds often decline. Exact local calculations show why candidate-pair geometry does not determine global selection. These findings characterize conditional transmission of an available memory-use policy. They do not establish memory's spontaneous origin, equilibrium invasion, a general costly advantage, or measured biological effects. Research preprint version 1.1.0; not externally peer reviewed. Includes studies 045–057, 15,053 saved-table estimates, 13 figures, scientific source and scoped computational checks. The compact release excludes raw candidate-by-candidate trajectories and random tapes. Manuscript/data: CC BY 4.0; original code: MIT. AI assistance is disclosed. Versioned GitHub release: https://github.com/jackchenx3/private-memory-recurrence/releases/tag/v1.1.0 Previous version remains available: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22907237