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Territorial dynamics and stable home range formation for central place foragers
Jonathan R Potts1, Stephen Harris, Luca Giuggioli
1Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom. jonathan.potts.08@bristol.ac.uk
Plos One
|April 6, 2012
Summary
Animal territories are dynamic, with scent marking crucial for communication. This study reveals stable home ranges emerge when animals exhibit central place foraging behavior alongside scent-mediated avoidance, quantifying scent persistence and movement bias.
Area of Science:
- Behavioral Ecology
- Theoretical Ecology
- Animal Behavior
Background:
- Conspecific avoidance and scent marking are vital for territory formation in mammals.
- Quantifying the persistence of scent cues in animal communication remains challenging.
- Previous models treated animals as random walkers, leading to dynamic territories.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the mechanisms driving stable home range formation in animals.
- To model how central place foraging influences territorial dynamics.
- To develop methods for quantifying scent persistence and movement bias.
Main Methods:
- Mathematical modeling of animal movement as random walks with scent-mediated interactions.
- Incorporation of central place foraging behavior into movement models.
- Derivation of approximate analytic expressions for animal probability density functions.
Main Results:
- Stable home ranges emerge when central place foraging is combined with scent-mediated avoidance.
- Territorial dynamics lead to a steady state in territory border probability distributions.
- Analytic expressions allow quantification of movement bias and scent cue persistence.
Conclusions:
- Central place foraging is a key mechanism for generating stable home ranges.
- The developed model provides tools to quantify scent communication dynamics in animals.
- Insights into allometric scaling laws of animal space use are provided.
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