Two principal strategies in avian communal roosts.

Examines the hypothesis that invokes information exchange as the principal roost function. A new hypothesis is based on the premise that not all individuals participate in the roost for the same reason: because dominance status is related to food-finding ability, subordinate birds use roost to identify and follow dominant individuals to food. Dominant birds tolerate this information parasitism because their status affords them not only preferred access to food patches but more importantly access to central (or higher) perches which are buffered from predation by the surrounding subordinate individuals in the roost. -from Author