Fraser Darling effect

Many animals seek protection in flocks, herds, gaggles and pods. Such gatherings bring advantages beyond swamping predators through weight of numbers. Seabirds nesting in dense colonies raise their young faster than those going it alone, and a shorter breeding cycle exposes them to fewer predators. The British ecologist Frank Fraser Darling, who first documented the effect in herring gulls, believed that social stimulation from neighbours primes a bird’s physiology for reproduction through something akin to group courtship. SB

Communal living has benefits for herring gulls.