Heterospecific attraction among forest birds: a review

By M. Mönkkönen, Jukka T. Forsman. 2002

134 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this paper we review the evidence for a habitat selection process where colonizing individuals use other species presence as cues to profitable breeding sites. Our experimental studies in Fennoscandia and North America have shown that den- sity and species richness of migrant birds breeding in the forests respond positively to experimentally augmented titmice densities. We used analytical modeling to analyze ecological conditions, which may favor a habitat selection process where later arriv- ing individuals (colonists) use the presence of earlier established species (residents) as a cue to profitable breeding sites. We compared the fitness of two colonist strate- gies: 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). Model results suggested that cue-using strategy is more beneficial in most ecological conditions and that this may result in heterospecific attraction. Fur- ther field experiments showed that migrant individuals selected nest sites at close vicinity of nesting titmice, and bred earlier and reproduced better. We conclude that heterospecific attraction may be a common and widespread process among forest birds particularly in seasonal environments.

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6aa5dee744dec9242a3a88771bea47a61511bcbf

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In Ecology

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

Citations in the corpus

Soundscape orientation: a new field in need of sound investigation (2008, background): “A specific category of soundscape orientation has been studied in birds: habitat selection guided by ‘heterospecific attraction’ (Mönkkönen et al. 1990; reviewed in Mönkkönen & Forsman 2002).”
Fear factor: prey habitat selection and its consequences in a predation risk landscape (2006, background): “Individuals are known to use cues such as the presence or density of conspecifics and heterospecifics (Stamps 1988, Mönkkönen and Forsman 2002) or public information based on monitoring conspecific performance (e.g. reproductive success) in making habitat selection decisions (Danchin et al. 2004).”
Antipredator calls of tufted titmice and interspecific transfer of encoded threat information (2012, background): “Such ‘‘heterospecific attraction’’ likely increases settlement efficiency in climates with contracted breeding seasons (Mönkkönen and Forsman 2002).”
Juvenile coral reef fish use sound to locate habitats (2011, background): “…are distinguishing and orientating to habitats on the basis of distinctive conspecific or heterospecific acoustic signals, a phenomenon that has also been identified in birds and amphibians (Mönkkönen et al. 1990; Mönkkönen and Forsman 2002; Diego-Rasilla and Luengo 2004, 2007; Fletcher 2007).”
Inclusive heritability: combining genetic and non-genetic information to study animal behavior and culture (2010, unknown): “…has been demonstrated in a variety of animals including fish (Coolen et al. 2003), amphibians (Phelps et al. 2007) and birds (Forsman et al. 1998, 2002, Forsman 2000, Mönkkönen and Forsman 2002, Parejo et al. 2004, Parejo and Avilés 2007, reviewed by Seppänen et al. 2007) in ecological contexts.”