Fig. 1

Relationship between the distribution of suitable nest habitat and inter-nest distances when individuals choose nest locations randomly on a hypothetical, linear shoreline of length 360 arbitrary units in two reproduction episodes. Dot plots show 100 randomly chosen points—nest locations—in the interval [0,, 360] when (top) suitable nest habitat is uniformly distributed or (bottom) clumped, with 50 of the 100 sites in the interval [135, 225]. The upper and lower rows represent the sites occupied in Episode 1 and Episode 2, respectively, and solid dots in Episode 2 show the randomly chosen nest locations of 50 individuals that also bred in Episode 1. Lines project back to their nest locations in Episode 1. Histograms summarize the expected frequencies (\(\overline{X}\pm 2 \text{SE })\) of inter-nest distances, based on 1,000 simulations, between paired nest locations of individuals that bred in both Episodes 1 and 2