Social Information and Habitat Selection in Avian Ecology

Birds often rely on social cues as a vital supplement to personal sampling when selecting breeding and foraging habitats. Such social information can be derived from conspecifics—members of the same species—or heterospecifics—individuals of different species—which provide indicators of resource availability, predator risk and habitat quality. The process of habitat selection mediated by social information spans from conspecific attraction, where individuals preferentially settle near experienced neighbours, to selective interspecific information use, in which birds actively adopt or reject behaviours observed in other species. These dynamics influence individual fitness through settlement decisions and prospecting movements, shaping dispersal patterns, colony foundation and breeding success. At the community level, social information exchanges can drive niche convergence or divergence, affect co-existence and modulate species distributions. Insights into these processes are increasingly informing conservation strategies, such as the use of decoys or playback to guide reintroduction efforts and the management of declining populations by manipulating social habitat cues.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have integrated high-resolution movement data with social information networks to elucidate habitat-selection mechanisms. In one investigation, GPS-equipped female barn owls were tracked as they revisited conspecific nest boxes during brood rearing. The study demonstrated that individual phenotypic traits, such as feather eumelanism, and partner provisioning rates jointly influenced prospecting behaviour. Frequent revisits to previously exploited sites increased the probability of a second clutch, linking social information use with reproductive output. This work highlights how combining biologging and social cue analysis can reveal the proximate drivers of settlement decisions and their fitness consequences in nocturnal predators.

Social Information and Habitat Selection in Avian Ecology publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in social information and habitat selection in avian ecology across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Conspecific attraction: The tendency of individuals to settle near members of their own species to use their presence as an indicator of habitat quality.

Heterospecific information use: The process of using social cues from other species to inform habitat selection and risk assessment.

Prospecting behaviour: The movements undertaken by breeding individuals to visit and assess potential future breeding sites, often guided by social or environmental cues.

Niche convergence/divergence: The processes by which species’ ecological roles or resource use become more similar (convergence) or more dissimilar (divergence) due to behavioural and environmental interactions.

References

1. Ecological and evolutionary consequences of selective interspecific information use. Ecology Letters (2023).
2. Prospecting movements link phenotypic traits to female annual potential fitness in a nocturnal predator. Scientific Reports (2023).
3. A review of conspecific attraction for habitat selection across taxa. Ecology and Evolution (2020).
4. Colony Foundation in an Oceanic Seabird. PLOS ONE (2016).
5. Interspecific information on predation risk affects nest site choice in a passerine bird. BMC Ecology and Evolution (2018).