Shorebird feeding specialists differ in how environmental conditions alter their foraging time

Feeding specialization is a common cause of individual variation. Fitness payoffs of specialization vary with environmental conditions, but the underlying behavioral mechanisms are poorly understood. Such mechanistic knowledge, however, is crucial to reliably predict responses of heterogeneous populations to environmental change. We quantified spatiotemporal allocation of foraging behavior in wintering Eurasian oystercatchers (Haematopus...