Nest site lottery revisited: towards a mechanistic model of population growth suppressed by the availability of nest sites

Abstract

In the “nest site lottery” mechanism, newborns form a pool of candidates and randomly drawn candidates replace the dead adults in their nest sites. However, the selection process has only been analyzed under the assumption of an equilibrium population size. In this study, we extend this model to cases where the population size is not at an equilibrium, which yields a simplified (but fully mechanistic) biphasic population growth model, where the suppression of growth is driven only by the availability of free nest sites for newborns. This new model is free of the inconsistency found in the classical single phase models (such as the logistic model), where the number of recruited newborns can exceed the number of free nest sites. We analyzed the stability of the stationary density surfaces and the selection mechanisms for individual strategies described by different vital rates, which are implied by the new model.