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PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR TEXT.This is a peer-reviewed, post-print (final draft post-refereeing) version of the following published document:
Goodenough
DisclaimerThe University of Gloucestershire has obtained warranties from all depositors as to their title in the material deposited and as to their right to deposit such material.The University of Gloucestershire makes no representation or warranties of commercial utility, title, or fitness for a particular purpose or any other warranty, express or implied in respect of any material deposited.The University of Gloucestershire makes no representation that the use of the materials will not infringe any patent, copyright, trademark or other property or proprietary rights.The University of Gloucestershire accepts no liability for any infringement of intellectual property rights in any material deposited but will remove such material from public view pending investigation in the event of an allegation of any such infringement. Many widely-accepted ecological concepts are simplified assumptions about complex situations, which remain largely untested. One example is the assumption that nest-building species actively choose nest sites when they are not resource limited: an assumption that has seen little direct empirical testing as most studies 4 on nest-site selection start with the assumption that individuals choose nest sites actively, rather than simply by chance. We used 15 years of data from a nestbox scheme in the UK to test the assumption of active nestsite choice in three bird species that differ in breeding and migratory strategy: blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus), great tit (Parus major) and pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca). Nest-site selection was non-random 8 (implying active nest-site choice) for blue and great tits, but not for pied flycatchers. We also considered the relative importance of year-specific and site-specific factors in determining occupation of nest sites. Sitespecific factors were more important than year-specific factors for the tit species, while the reverse was true for pied flycatchers. Our results show that nest site selection, in birds at least, is not always the result of 12 active choice and thus that active choice ...