In this paper we review the evidence for a habitat selection process where colonizing individuals use other species presence as cues to profitable breeding sites. Our experimental studies in Fennoscandia and North America have shown that density and species richness of migrant birds breeding in the forests respond positively to experimentally augmented titmice densities. We used analytical modeling to analyze ecological conditions, which may favor a habitat selection process where later arriving individuals (colonists) use the presence of earlier established species (residents) as a cue to profitable breeding sites. We compared the fitness of two colonist strategies: colonists could either directly sample the relative quality of the patches (termed samplers) or, alternatively, they could also use residents as a cue of patch quality (cue-users). Model results suggested that cue-using strategy is more beneficial in most ecological conditions and that this may result in heterospecific attraction. Further field experiments showed that migrant individuals selected nest sites at close vicinity of nesting titmice, and bred earlier and reproduced better. We conclude that heterospecific attraction may be a common and widespread process among forest birds particularly in seasonal environments.

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