Territory selection in the city: can birds reliably judge territory quality in a novel urban environment?

Abstract

Although territory selection is likely to be under strong natural selection, in many cases it might be impossible for individuals to judge territory quality directly in terms of fitness return. Thus, animals often rely on some indirect environmental cues in territory assessment and they may not be able to make optimal settlement decisions when subjected to a novel environment. The aim of this study was to investigate adaptiveness of territory selection in a newly established urban population (Ł od z, central Poland) of a waterbird, the Eurasian coot Fulica atra. For this purpose, we correlated occupancy rate of urban breeding territories over a 7-year period with basic fitness-related traits of coots. We found that the average number of fledglings raised by Eurasian coots increased with territory occupancy, indicating that birds were able to reliably judge territory quality and to choose nest sites which maximized their reproductive success. This conclusion was supported by the fact that in the process of territory selection coots used a set of habitat cues important for successful nest concealment and brood safety. In contrast, we found that coots showed no preferences for territories which provided easy access to anthropogenic food resources (via public feeding of waterbirds) and there was no relationship between condition of adult birds and territory occupancy, suggesting that either: (1) brood safety was a more important component in territory assessment than food availability, or (2) birds were unable to reliably judge food resources in a novel urban landscape.

Urbanization is associated with non‐coding polymorphisms in candidate behavioural genes in the Eurasian coot

“…Our previous studies in the Eurasian coot indicated that urban individuals are more willing to exploit novel anthropogenic food sources and show elevated boldness towards humans when compared with nonurban conspecifics (Minias et al, 2018 ). We also found a significant positive relationship between territory occupancy and reproductive success in urban coots, suggesting that they may have capabilities to reliably assess territory quality in a novel urban environment (Minias & Janiszewski, 2016 ). These patterns should likely be attributed to better cognition and exploratory behaviour, which may be linked to genetic differences in the expression of key behavioural genes.…”

Measuring habitat quality for waterbirds: A review

“…Vegetation structure has implications for the suitability of a site for nest placement (Barati et al, 2011 ; Koivula & Rönkä, 1998 ), and influences probability of a territory being occupied (Minias & Janiszewski, 2016 )…”

“…Hemoglobin concentration does not correlate with breeding territory settlement decisions in terms of a territory's expected reproductive output (Minias & Janiszewski, 2016 )…”

Little Owl Aggression and Territory in Urban and Rural Landscapes

“…Also, the successful urban colonizer must adopt or express substantial behavioral plasticity to different habitat structures and the density of the human population in towns [5,8,9]. Although many studies have analyzed the urbanization process, much less is understood about how animal populations differ in habitat requirements between urban and rural areas and how this difference mediates the behavior of animals [8,[10][11][12][13][14]. The selection of sites by animals to meet their requirements is a behavioral process itself; however, it is more related to physical components of the environment rather than any other types of behavior linked with the presence of conspecifics or different species (e.g., aggressive behavior or flocking).…”