Abstract
Animals explore and prospect space searching for resources and individuals may disperse, targeting suitable patches to increase fitness. Nevertheless, dispersal is costly because it implies leaving the patch where the individual has gathered information and reduced uncertainty. In social species, information gathered during the prospection process for deciding whether and where to disperse is not only personal but also public, i.e. conspecific density and breeding performance. In empty patches, public information is not available and dispersal for colonisation would be more challenging. Here we study the prospecting in a metapopulation of colonial Audouin’s gulls using PTT platform terminal transmitters tagging for up to 4 years and GPS tagging during the incubation period. A large percentage of birds (65%) prospected occupied patches; strikingly, 62% of prospectors also visited empty patches that were colonised in later years. Frequency and intensity of prospecting were higher for failed breeders, who dispersed more than successful breeders. Prospecting and dispersal also occurred mostly to neighbouring patches where population density was higher. GPSs revealed that many breeders (59%) prospected while actively incubating, which suggests that they gathered information before knowing the fate of their reproduction. Prospecting may be enhanced in species adapted to breed in ephemeral habitats, such as Audouin’s gulls. Interestingly, none of the tracked individuals colonised an empty patch despite having prospected over a period of up to three consecutive years. Lack of public information in empty patches may drive extended prospecting, long time delays in colonisation and non-linear transient phenomena in metapopulation dynamics and species range expansion.
Highlights
Animals explore space searching for resources such as food, shelter against predators, and mates
These benefits result from gathering information at alternative patches, which would reduce the potential risks of dispersal (Schmidt et al 2010; Delgado et al 2014; Ponchon et al 2015b)
Prospecting at large scales has been explored for a limited range of species, it should increase for species evolving in very dynamic patches such as ephemeral habitats
Summary
Animals explore space searching for resources such as food, shelter against predators, and mates. It is well-known that dispersal processes are common in animal populations and they have been selected to increase fitness by settling in the best patch for surviving and reproducing (Bullock et al 2002; Clobert et al 2012). Prospecting increases after perturbations (e.g. increase of predation, harsh weather) and deterioration of patch suitability (Ponchon et al 2015a; Payo-Payo et al 2017), but patch spatial configuration, life histories, sex, social status and social environment and its feedbacks have been appealed Empirical data to assess the importance of each of the potential drivers at large spatial scales are still scarce (Votier et al 2011; Péron and Grémillet 2013; Ponchon et al 2015a; Campioni et al 2017)
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