settling decisions and heterospecific social information use in shrikes解决决策和heterospecific社会信息用于伯劳鸟.pdfVIP

Settling Decisions and Heterospecific Social Information Use in Shrikes 1,2 1,2 3 2 Martin Hromada *, Marcin Antczak , Thomas J. Valone , Piotr Tryjanowski ˇ ´ ˇ 1 Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic, 2 Department of Behavioural Ecology, Adam Mickiewicz ´ University, Poznan, Poland, 3 Department of Biology, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America Abstract Animals often settle near competitors, a behavior known as social attraction, which belies standard habitat selection theory. Two hypotheses account for these observations: individuals obtain Allee benefits mediated by the physical presence of a competitor, or they use successfully settled individual as a source of information indicating the location of high quality habitat. We evaluated these hypotheses experimentally in two species of shrikes. These passerine birds with a raptor-like mode of life impale prey to create larders that serve as an indicator of male/habitat quality. Thus, two forms of indirect information are available in our system: a successfully settled shrike and its larder. Typically these two cues are associated with each other, however, our experimental treatment created an unnatural situation by disassociating them. We manipulated the presence of larders of great grey shrikes and examined the settling decisions of red-backed shrikes within and outside the great grey shrike territories. Male red-backed shrikes did not settle soo