Does social information affect the settlement decisions of resident birds in their second breeding attempt? A case study of the Japanese tit (Parus minor)

Individuals may gather information about environmental conditions when deciding where to breed in order to maximize their lifetime fitness. Many studies have shown that birds can rely on social information to select their nest site. The location of active nests and the reproductive success of conspecifics and heterospecifics can provide accurate predictions about the quality of the breeding habitat. Some short-lived species can facultatively reproduce two and/or more times within a breeding season. However, few studies have focused on how multiple-brooding individuals select nest sites for their second breeding attempts. In this study, we use long-term data to test whether the Japanese tit (Parus minor) can use social information from conspecifics and/or heterospecifics to select a nest site for the second breeding attempt. Our results showed that the nest boxes occupied by tits on their second breeding attempt tended to be surrounded by more breeding conspecific nests, first-breeding s..., The fieldwork was conducted from March-July over successive years from 2014 to 2021 in an approximately 134.5 ha mixed deciduous forest at Zuojia Nature Reserve (44°1′–45°0′N, 126°0′–126°8′E) in Jilin Province, northeastern China. The study area consisted of 9 discrete deciduous forest patches, with nearly homogeneous forest characteristics. The dominant tree species were Quercus mongolica, Tilia mandshurica, Betula davurica, Phellodendron amurense, and Sophora japonica. Since 2004, many artificial nest boxes have been provided for secondary cavity-nesting birds in this area. The Japanese tit, Eurasian nuthatch, Daurian redstart, and yellow-rumped flycatcher readily accept artificial nest boxes for breeding, allowing detailed breeding data and the identity of breeders to be collected on a large number of nests. Approximately 400 artificial nest boxes were provided per year in our study area. The nest boxes were distributed among patches and separated by 30–50 m, with 40 to 50 boxes equa..., The significance level was set at α= 0.05. All analyses were undertaken using the statistical software R 4.1.1 (R Core Team). We calculated all P values using Wald chi-square tests with the ANOVA function in the car package (Fox and Weisberg 2019). Conditional logistic regression models were implemented using the clogit function found within the survival package (Therneau 2015). The GLMMs were implemented using the package “lme4’’ (Bates et al. 2015).