Prospecting movements link phenotypic traits to female annual potential fitness in a nocturnal predator

Abstract

Recent biologging technology reveals hidden life and breeding strategies of nocturnal animals. Combining animal movement patterns with individual characteristics and landscape features can uncover meaningful behaviours that directly influence fitness. Consequently, defining the proximate mechanisms and adaptive value of the identified behaviours is of paramount importance. Breeding female barn owls (Tyto alba), a colour-polymorphic species, recurrently visit other nest boxes at night. We described and quantified this behaviour for the first time, linking it with possible drivers, and individual fitness. We GPS-equipped 178 female barn owls and 122 male partners from 2016 to 2020 in western Switzerland during the chick rearing phase. We observed that 111 (65%) of the tracked breeding females were (re)visiting nest boxes while still carrying out their first brood. We modelled their prospecting parameters as a function of brood-, individual- and partner-related variables and found that female feather eumelanism predicted the emergence of prospecting behaviour (less melanic females are usually prospecting). More importantly we found that increasing male parental investment (e.g., feeding rate) increased female prospecting efforts. Ultimately, females would (re)visit a nest more often if they had used it in the past and were more likely to lay a second clutch afterwards, consequently having higher annual fecundity than non-prospecting females. Despite these apparent immediate benefits, they did not fledge more chicks. Through biologging and long-term field monitoring, we highlight how phenotypic traits (melanism and parental investment) can be related to movement patterns and the annual potential reproductive output (fecundity) of female barn owls.