Winter territory prospecting is associated with life‐history stage but not activity in a passerine

Abstract

Finding a high quality territory is essential for many animals to reproduce successfully. Despite its importance for fitness, we know little about the process of territory prospecting in wild birds, and whether individual traits and behaviours, such as personality, co-vary with territory prospecting. Here, we use long-term data from a wild, insular house sparrow Passer domesticus population to test three hypotheses about territory fidelity and prospecting: 1) house sparrows show high territory fidelity between years and also during winter. 2) Individuals will prospect for a breeding territory during their first winter whereas older, more experienced individuals will keep a territory from previous years and will, therefore, show no or reduced winter territory prospecting. 3) More active behavioural types will prospect more than less active behavioural types. We use data from four winters from automatically, daily recorded nest-box visits of 188 birds of known age. The number of nest-boxes that each individual visited within each winter was used as a proxy of winter territory prospecting. We show that house sparrows visit multiple nest-boxes during their first winter, whereas older individuals keep territories year-round and, potentially because of this, indeed show reduced winter territory prospecting. Activity was not associated with the number of nest-boxes visited. Further research is needed to investigate whether time of territory and mate acquisition differs among individuals and the possible effect on lifetime fitness.

Individual differences in behaviour explain variation in survival: a meta‐analysis

“…The datasets from van Overveld et al and Kralj‐Fišer et al present the original published data from the paper plus additional unpublished data. The dataset of Lundy sparrow project (unpublished data) present data partially published in Sánchez‐Tójar et al .…”

Heritability and social brood effects on personality in juvenile and adult life‐history stages in a wild passerine

“…The novel environment was a domed tent containing two artificial bamboo‐cane trees (Appendix S1: Fig. S1b, described in Sánchez‐Tójar et al ., ). Birds were observed for 5 min through a mesh triangle (approximately 5 × 5 × 7 cm).…”

“…Nestlings were placed in a circular arena marked with a grid pattern and surrounded by a wall (Appendix S1: Fig. S1c, described in Sánchez‐Tójar et al ., ). We video‐recorded the nestlings’ activity and recorded the total number of squares a nestling crossed in 30 seconds.…”

Reproductive effort and future parental competitive ability: A nest box removal experiment

“…Taking into account that only the manipulated parents of the year before had a transponder and first year breeders which did not have a transponder were also around, the true degree of competition was likely higher. It is known from other passerine species that birds also under "natural" conditions exhibit prospecting behaviour, that is, inspecting multiple nesting sites before and during breeding (Doligez, Cadet, Danchin, & Boulinier, 2003;Doligez, Pärt, & Danchin, 2004;Pärt & Doligez, 2003;Sánchez-Tójar et al, 2017). For House sparrows (Passer Domesticus), it was shown that experienced adult breeders prospected very little, likely because they hold on to the same territories year round (Sánchez-Tójar et al, 2017).…”

“…It is known from other passerine species that birds also under "natural" conditions exhibit prospecting behaviour, that is, inspecting multiple nesting sites before and during breeding (Doligez, Cadet, Danchin, & Boulinier, 2003;Doligez, Pärt, & Danchin, 2004;Pärt & Doligez, 2003;Sánchez-Tójar et al, 2017). For House sparrows (Passer Domesticus), it was shown that experienced adult breeders prospected very little, likely because they hold on to the same territories year round (Sánchez-Tójar et al, 2017). The same may hold for the territorial Great tit (Andreu & Barba, 2006;Tinbergen, 2005) under "natural" levels of competition for nest boxes.…”