The year-round importance of breeding sites in common guillemots Uria aalge ...

• Main Author: Bennett, Sophie
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of Liverpool Repository 2024
• Subjects: Uria aalge; uria
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17638/03170107; https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3170107

As many natural populations are declining and facing increasing threats, understanding the mechanisms governing key demographic rates such as breeding success is increasingly critical. Across heterogeneous environments, animal breeding sites may differ in their quality such that some sites offer an intrinsically higher likelihood of breeding success than others. In declining populations, average quality of breeding sites used by the population is predicted to increase as individuals preferentially occupy the best locations (the ‘buffer effect’). However, we currently have limited understanding of whether this regulatory process operates in populations, or how its effects may vary in populations showing highly dynamic changes in density over time. Furthermore, the competition for higher quality breeding sites may often be intense such that individuals invest considerable time in site occupancy to protect higher quality breeding sites, even outside the breeding season. The site defence hypothesis predicts that ...