Making habitat selection more “familiar”: a review |
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Authors: | Walter H Piper |
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Institution: | (1) School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Chapman University, Orange, CA 92866, USA |
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Abstract: | Behavioral ecologists generally agree that animals derive benefits from familiarity with spaces that they inhabit or visit,
yet site familiarity is rudimentary or lacking in most models of habitat selection. In this review, I examine evidence for
the occurrence of site familiarity and its fitness benefits, describe the difficulty of measuring site familiarity, note its
omission from the influential ideal free and ideal despotic models, and use a literature search to test an assumption of the
ideal models that has become widespread in habitat selection theory: that animals behave without regard for site familiarity.
I find little support for such “familiarity blindness” in vertebrates. Next I discuss how the study of public information
has drawn attention away from site familiarity and point out that both kinds of information are likely to be important in
habitat selection. I proceed to examine current models of initial settlement (exploration and settlement of prebreeders on
first territories) and optional resettlement (site fidelity or dispersal by established breeders following a period of prospecting)
and find that the latter include only basic forms of site familiarity. Hence, I develop the concept that an inhabited space
holds a unique “private value” to an animal based on its familiarity with the space and offer a simple model for optional
resettlement based on private value that generates several novel predictions, including site fidelity based on cumulative
breeding site familiarity and high site fidelity among species with complex territories. |
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