Variation in habitat choice and delayed reproduction: Adaptive queuing strategies or individual quality differences?

van de Pol, Martijn; Pen, I; Heg, Dik; Weissing, Franz (2007). Variation in habitat choice and delayed reproduction: Adaptive queuing strategies or individual quality differences? The American naturalist, 170(4), pp. 530-541. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press 10.1086/521237

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In most species, some individuals delay reproduction or occupy inferior breeding positions. The queue hypothesis tries to explain both patterns by proposing that individuals strategically delay breeding (queue) to acquire better breeding or social positions. In 1995, Ens, Weissing, and Drent addressed evolutionarily stable queuing strategies in situations with habitat heterogeneity. However, their model did not consider the non - mutually exclusive individual quality hypothesis, which suggests that some individuals delay breeding or occupy inferior breeding positions because they are poor competitors. Here we extend their model with individual differences in competitive abilities, which are probably plentiful in nature. We show that including even the smallest competitive asymmetries will result in individuals using queuing strategies completely different from those in models that assume equal competitors. Subsequently, we investigate how well our models can explain settlement patterns in the wild, using a long-term study on oystercatchers. This long-lived shorebird exhibits strong variation in age of first reproduction and territory quality. We show that only models that include competitive asymmetries can explain why oystercatchers' settlement patterns depend on natal origin. We conclude that predictions from queuing models are very sensitive to assumptions about competitive asymmetries, while detecting such differences in the wild is often problematic.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE)

UniBE Contributor:

Heg, Dierik Hans

ISSN:

0003-0147

Publisher:

University of Chicago Press

Language:

English

Submitter:

Factscience Import

Date Deposited:

04 Oct 2013 14:58

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 14:18

Publisher DOI:

10.1086/521237

PubMed ID:

17891732

Web of Science ID:

000249307700006

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/25161 (FactScience: 56052)

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