Social information trumps vegetation structure in breeding-site selection by a migrant songbird

摘要

To maximize fitness, organisms must assess and select suitable habitat. Early research studying birdssuggested that organisms consider primarily vegetation structural cues in their habitat choices. We show thatexperimental exposure to singing in the post-breeding period provides a social cue that is used for habitatselection the following year by a migrant songbird, the black-throated blue warbler (Dendroica caerulescens).Our experimental social cues coerced individuals to adopt territories in areas of very poor habitat qualitywhere individuals typically do not occur. This indicates that social information can override typicalassociations with vegetation structure. We demonstrate that a strong settlement response was elicitedbecause post-breeding song at a site is highly correlated with reproductive success. These results constitute apreviously undocumented, but highly parsimonious mechanism for the inadvertent transfer of reproductive(public) information from successful breeders to dispersers. We hypothesize that post-breeding song is apervasive and reliable cue for species that communicate vocally, inhabit temporally autocorrelatedenvironments, produce young asynchronously and/or abandon territories after reproductive failure.