Warder C. Allee brought attention to the possibility of a positive relationship between
aspects of fitness and population size 50 years ago. Until recently, however, this concept …

Abstract. Understanding habitat quality for birds is crucial for ecologists and managers, but
few papers have explored the advantages and disadvantages of different ways to measure …

Behavioral ecologists generally agree that animals derive benefits from familiarity with
spaces that they inhabit or visit, yet site familiarity is rudimentary or lacking in most models of …

Recent insights from habitat selection theory may help conservation managers encourage
released animals to settle in appropriate habitats. By all measures, success rates for captive …

I studied 787 female and 510 male Prothonotary Warblers (Protonotaria citrea) breeding in
southern Illinois, USA, from 1994 to 2000 to test two competing hypotheses that may explain …

To select their future breeding site, individuals usually have to assess local quality by using
environmental cues. One optimal cue may be 'public information', the local reproductive …

Public information (PI), a form of indirect social information, is used by individuals to estimate
the quality of environmental parameters. It can be acquired in two ways. One way is by …

The quality of a bird's breeding site is a primary determinant of its success or failure to
reproduce there. We expect birds to devote considerable effort to acquiring accurate …

Conspecific attraction, the tendency for individuals of a species to settle near one another, is
well described in colonial species, especially birds. Although this behavior may occur in …

There has been a recent interest in integrating an understanding of behaviour into
conservation biology. Unfortunately, there has been no paradigm for such a process …