How can we measure resource quality when resources differ in many ways? Deconstructing shelter quality in a social...

Resource quality is an important concept in ecology and evolution that attempts to capture the fitness benefits a resource affords to an organism. Yet "quality" is a multivariate concept, potentially affected by many variables pertaining to the resource, its surroundings, and the resource chooser. Researchers often use a small number of proxy variables to simplify their estimation of resource quality, but without vetting their proxies against a wider set of potential quality estimators this approach risks overlooking potentially important characteristics that can explain patterns of resource use in their study systems. Here we used Neolamprologus multifasciatus, a group-living cichlid fish that utilizes empty snail shells as shelter resources, to examine how shells were used by, and partitioned among, group members in relation to a range of attributes, including shell size, intactness, texture, spatial position, and usage by heterospecifics. This approach generated a comprehensive picture of what characteristics contribute to the attractiveness and quality of each shell resource, confirming the importance of two previously proposed shell characteristics, size and intactness, but highlighting the influences of other unexplored variables, including shell spatial position and usage by heterospecifics. We also present a generally applicable "resource attractiveness index" as a means to estimate resource quality based on resource choice data. This index incorporates information from any number of resource characteristics and is of particular use when researchers wish to quantify resource value, but many characteristics jointly contribute to the value and attractiveness of the resource.