Size-Dependent Nest Site Choice by Cavity-Dwelling Ants

Nest Site Choice in Social Insects

Size matters: nest colonization patterns for twig-nesting ants

Understanding the drivers of ant diversity and co-occurrence in agroecosystems is fundamental because ants participate in interactions that influence agroecosystem processes. Multiple local and regional factors influence ant community assembly.We examined local factors that influence the structure of a twig-nesting ant community in a coffee system in Mexico using an experimental approach. We in...

Evolution of clutch size in cavity-excavating birds: the nest site limitation hypothesis revisited.

There are two major competing hypotheses for variation in clutch size among cavity-nesting species. The nest site limitation hypothesis postulates that nesting opportunities are more limited for weak excavators, which consequently invest more in each breeding attempt by laying larger clutches. Alternatively, clutch size may be determined by diet; the clutch sizes of strong excavators may be sma...

Does sex-ratio selection influence nest-site choice in a reptile with temperature-dependent sex determination?

Evolutionary theory predicts that dioecious species should produce a balanced primary sex ratio maintained by frequency-dependent selection. Organisms with environmental sex determination, however, are vulnerable to maladaptive sex ratios, because environmental conditions vary spatio-temporally. For reptiles with temperature-dependent sex determination, nest-site choice is a behavioural materna...

Retirement investment theory explains patterns in songbird nest-site choice.

When opposing evolutionary selection pressures act on a behavioural trait, the result is often stabilizing selection for an intermediate optimal phenotype, with deviations from the predicted optimum attributed to tracking a moving target, development of behavioural syndromes or shifts in riskiness over an individual's lifetime. We investigated nest-site choice by female golden-winged warblers, ...