Institute of Zoology, Poznań University of Life Sciences, ul. Wojska Polskiego 71C, 60-625, Poznań, Poland.
Sci Rep. 2021 Jan 12;11(1):570. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-79942-3.
Understanding animal responses to environmental change is crucial for management of ecological traps. Between-year habitat selection was investigated in red-necked grebes (Podiceps grisegena) breeding on semi-natural fish ponds, where differential stocking of fish created contrasting yet poorly predictable brood-stage food availabilities. Grebes lured to low-quality ponds were more likely to shift territories than birds nesting on high-quality ponds, and tended to move to ponds whose habitat quality had been high in the previous year, irrespective of the current quality of the new and old territories. The territory switchers typically visited their future breeding ponds during or immediately after the brood-rearing period. However, owing to rotation of fish stocks, the habitat quality of many ponds changed in the following year, and then switchers from low-quality ponds and stayers on previously high-quality ponds were ecologically trapped. Thus, although breeders were making an informed choice, their settlement decisions, based on the win-stay/lose-switch rule and prospecting a year in advance, were inappropriate in conditions of year-to-year habitat fluctuations. Effective adaptation to rapid environmental change may necessitate both learning to correctly evaluate uncertain environmental cues and abandonment of previously adaptive decision-making algorithms (here prioritizing past-year information and assuming temporal autocorrelation of habitat quality).
了解动物对环境变化的反应对于管理生态陷阱至关重要。本研究调查了在半自然鱼塘繁殖的赤颈䴙䴘（Podiceps grisegena）的年际生境选择，鱼类的差异放养导致了截然不同但难以预测的育雏期食物可获得性。被吸引到低质量池塘的䴙䴘比在高质量池塘筑巢的鸟类更有可能改变领地，并且倾向于迁移到前一年栖息地质量较高的池塘，而不论新老领地的当前质量如何。领地转换者通常在育雏期或之后立即访问他们未来的繁殖池塘。然而，由于鱼类种群的轮换，许多池塘的栖息地质量在次年发生了变化，然后来自低质量池塘的转换者和之前高质量池塘的留守者就会陷入生态陷阱。因此，尽管繁殖者做出了明智的选择，但基于赢留输换规则和提前一年探勘，他们的定居决策在年际生境波动的情况下是不恰当的。为了有效适应快速的环境变化，可能需要学会正确评估不确定的环境线索，并放弃以前的适应性决策算法（这里优先考虑去年的信息，并假设栖息地质量的时间自相关）。
