Prospecting behaviours allow individuals to gather personal and social information on the local quality of potential future breeding sites and help them make dispersal and settlement decisions. As it can have multiple consequences on individual distribution, fitness and population dynamics, exploring the ecology and evolution of prospecting strategies is essential in a context of climate change. Yet, studies dealing with this topic are scarce because of methodological and technological challenges. In this project, I will develop and apply novel theoretical and statistical approaches to deliver major new insights into the adaptive, ecological and evolutionary importance of prospecting strategies in individual and population responses to environmental change. First, I will develop a spatially-explicit individual-based model to quantify the effects of local environmental conditions, life history traits and range margins on the evolution of prospecting strategies.