Effects of Survival on the Attractiveness of Cues to Natal Dispersers

Habitat selection by natal dispersers is one of several contexts in which preexisting biases interact with experience to affect the attractiveness of cues from biologically significant items. Here we use a Bayesian approach to explore the conditions that favor this phenomenon. We demonstrate that the simplest possible type of natal experience-namely, survival to the age/stage of dispersal-can increase the attractiveness of cues from an individual's natal habitat relative to the attractiveness of those same cues to naive individuals. The effects of survivorship on cue attractiveness are strongest when the quality of the habitat that produces that cue varies widely across large spatial or temporal scales, when that type of habitat is rarely of high quality, and when offspring survivorship provides a reliable indication of the quality of that type of habitat at the current time and locality. More generally, the framework outlined here may also apply to other situations in which extended exposure to cues early in life increases the attractiveness of those cues later in life.