Importance of prospecting behaviour and social contacts in shaping fitness in a nongroup living species, the barn owl (Tyto alba)

The central aim of my thesis is to gain insights into the inter-individual variability of social phenotype—defined as the way each barn owl (Tyto alba) prospectively explores its environment and comes into contact with conspecifics—in a species traditionally considered solitary. Building on this, I will determine whether, and under which environmental conditions, individual differences in social prospecting influence key fitness components (survival, reproductive success).

To achieve these goals, I will evaluate both social and non-social drivers across multiple temporal (within the annual cycle, between years, and from early growth through to adulthood) and spatial scales (individual territories, population density).

I will address these topical questions using a recently installed, extensive network of RFID antennas combined with an integrated weighing system in Western Switzerland. This infrastructure provides unprecedented, continuous data on juvenile and adult barn owls’ visits to potential roosting and nesting sites, their co-occurrence with conspecifics, and simultaneous fluctuations in body mass throughout the year.

I will combine these data with long term monitoring data of reproductive success, physiological measurements (glucocorticoids) and habitat quality. For solitary species such as the barn owl, which face increasing habitat fragmentation leading to increased isolation of individuals and populations, this knowledge is particularly important for assessing the importance of the social environment in individual success and, consequently, species persistence.