Adaptive effects of natal experience on habitat selection by dispersers

Despite considerable interest in the effects of natal experience on habitat selection, little attention has been paid to the adaptive significance of this behaviour. Here we suggest that experience in the natal habitat may provide dispersers with information that improves the decisions they make while searching for a new habitat. In animals with time-limited sequential search, or in laboratory experiments using one-choice protocols, experience in the natal habitat may affect an individual's estimate of its total search time, or of its chances of encountering a high-quality habitat after leaving its natal habitat. In turn, theory suggests that changes in estimates of search time or encounter rates with high-quality habitats will affect the chances that dispersers will be attracted to cues from any habitat that is perceived to be of low or medium quality. For any disperser, regardless of search tactics, salient experiences in the natal habitat may change disperser estimates of the quality of new habitats that are similar to their natal habitat. For example, a history of successful foraging in the natal habitat might increase the attractiveness of cues from natal-type habitats, whereas difficulty foraging prior to dispersal might decrease it. In turn, any process that links an individual's experience in its natal habitat with its level of preference for cues from comparable natal-type habitats would encourage a positive relationship between habitat performance and preference, without requiring genetic correlations between these two variables. Generally speaking, positive effects of natal experience on habitat preference (NHPI) are predicted to be more common than negative effects of experience on habitat preference (negative NHPI). Predictions about the effects of natal experience on disperser estimates of search time, encounter rates and habitat quality can be investigated using appropriate experimental protocols, especially those that include naive subjects raised in habitats that lack the cues that dispersers use to locate and identify habitats under natural conditions. (c) 2006 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd.