Journal
JOURNAL OF ANIMAL ECOLOGY
Volume 90, Issue 12, Pages 2875-2887Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.13588
Keywords
behavioural consistency; foraging behaviour; habitat selection; kittiwake; movement ecology; seabird
Funding
- UK-SCaPE Programme
- European Regional Development Fund
- Marine Scotland
- Scottish Natural Heritage
- Natural England
- Natural Environment Research Council [NE/L0020450/1 NE/R016429/1]
- Joint Nature Conservation Committee
- Natural Resources Wales
- Environment Wales
- RSPB
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This study suggests that individual specialisations in habitat selection while foraging are more prevalent in heterogeneous environments. This trend is significant across multiple dynamic habitat variables and does not arise through site fidelity, highlighting the importance of environmental processes in facilitating behavioral adaptation by predators. Individual differences may drive evolutionary processes, indicating that environmental heterogeneity plays a crucial role in determining current and future population, species, and community dynamics.
Individual specialisations in behaviour are predicted to arise where divergence benefits fitness. Such specialisations are more likely in heterogeneous environments where there is both greater ecological opportunity and competition-driven frequency dependent selection. Such an effect could explain observed differences in rates of individual specialisation in habitat selection, as it offers individuals an opportunity to select for habitat types that maximise resource gain while minimising competition; however, this mechanism has not been tested before. Here, we use habitat selection functions to quantify individual specialisations while foraging by black-legged kittiwakes Rissa tridactyla, a marine top predator, at 15 colonies around the United Kingdom and Ireland, along a gradient of environmental heterogeneity. We find support for the hypothesis that individual specialisations in habitat selection while foraging are more prevalent in heterogeneous environments. This trend was significant across multiple dynamic habitat variables that change over short time-scales and did not arise through site fidelity, which highlights the importance of environmental processes in facilitating behavioural adaptation by predators. Individual differences may drive evolutionary processes, and therefore these results suggest that there is broad scope for the degree of environmental heterogeneity to determine current and future population, species and community dynamics.
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