Defence, intrusion and the evolutionary stability of territoriality

Territorial behaviour can only be adaptive if its costs are outweighed by its benefits. Territorial individuals incur costs by defending their territories against intruders. Usually these intruders are assumed to be non-territorial floaters attempting to take over the whole territory or neighbours trying to extend the borders of their own territory. We instead investigate how costs and benefits of territorial behaviour are affected by neighbours which invade to steal resources on a territory. We show analytically that in the absence of defence intrusion into neighbouring territories always pays and that even if territories are defended intrusion levels can still be high. Using a more detailed simulation model we find that territory defence usually disappears from the population even if owners have a strong advantage over intruders in terms of fighting costs or foraging efficiency. Defence and thus territoriality can only be evolutionarily stable if fighting costs for the intruder relative to the productivity of the territory are very high or if crossing the borders between territories carries additional costs. Our results show that stealing of resources by neighbours can have a considerable effect on the evolutionary stability of territory defence and thus territoriality itself. A more mechanistic model of territorial behaviour is needed to incorporate these kinds of mechanisms into a general theory on the evolution of territoriality.