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Evolution of heterospecific attraction: using other species as cues in habitat selection

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Abstract

We analyzed the ecological conditions that may favor a habitat selection process in which later arriving individuals (colonists) use the presence of earlier established species (residents) as a cue to profitable breeding sites (heterospecific attraction). In our model, colonists assessing potential breeding patches could select between high-quality source and low-quality sink patches. A proportion of the source patches were occupied by residents. Colonists could either directly sample the relative quality of the patches (termed samplers) or, alternatively, they could also use residents as a cue of patch quality (cue-users). Cue-users gained benefit from lowered costs when assessing occupied source patches. The cue-using strategy is an efficient way to choose the best possible patch not only when interspecific competition is intense, but also when benefits from social aggregation exceed the effects of competition. High relative cost of sampling empty patches increases the fitness of the cue-using strategy relative to samplers. The strongest attraction to heterospecifics was predicted when the benefit from aggregating with residents exceeded the effects of competition, and approximately half of the landscape consisted of occupied, high-quality source patches.

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Mönkkönen, M., Härdling, R., Forsman, J.T. et al. Evolution of heterospecific attraction: using other species as cues in habitat selection. Evolutionary Ecology 13, 93–106 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006590215306

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