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Animal Habitat Selection: Fitness Impact & Adaptive Behavior

Understanding how animals choose where to live based on habitat quality, dispersal, migration, and territorial behavior to maximize fitness is crucial in ecology studies. Explore different adaptive hypotheses that explain why animals select specific habitats and the consequences of habitat distribution on their survival and reproductive success.

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Animal Habitat Selection: Fitness Impact & Adaptive Behavior

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  1. How does an animal choose where to live?

  2. 5/29/08: Habitat Selection Lecture objectives: • Understand the adaptive value of: habitat selection, dispersal & migration, and territoriality • Be able to distinguish between multiple adaptive hypotheses for a given behavior

  3. Where an animal chooses to live can greatly affect its fitness

  4. Where an animal chooses to live can greatly affect its fitness Least tern& Habitat restoration

  5. Since habitat selection is important, animals should have evolved the ability to evaluate habitat quality 30-60 LSmallentrance

  6. So, where should an animal choose to live? But what happens to an animal’s fitness if all individuals choose the same spot? Animals must somehow distribute themselvesbetween patches that vary in resources

  7. Animals must somehow distribute themselvesbetween patches that vary in resource # or quality

  8. Example: distribution of female aphids

  9. Dispersal: moving to a new home area

  10. Why disperse? Costs Benefits

  11. Migration is a special form of dispersal Migration – the regular (seasonal) movement back and forth between two relatively distant locations by animals

  12. Why do animals migrate?

  13. Animals have evolved behaviors that lower the costs of migration

  14. Some birds can adjust their migratory strategy

  15. To defend or not to defend? Home Range Territory

  16. Why be territorial? Costs Benefits Bitterling (w/ mussel)

  17. How does an animal establish/maintain territorial boundaries?

  18. Example: Animals adjust territory size in relation to resource abundance

  19. Example: Animals adjust territory size in relation to resource abundance

  20. Example: well-defined boundaries reduce costs of territoriality “Good fences make good neighbors!!”

  21. In territorial disputes, the territory owner often wins

  22. Why does the owner often win?

  23. Example: Resource-holding power in damselflies

  24. Example: Benefits of a dear neighbor Success in driving away intruder 88% 71% Crab + neighbor Crab (alone) Fiddler crab, Uca mjoebergi

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