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Territorial Dynamics and Stable Home Range Formation for Central Place Foragers

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  • Jonathan R Potts
  • Stephen Harris
  • Luca Giuggioli

Abstract

Uncovering the mechanisms behind territory formation is a fundamental problem in behavioural ecology. The broad nature of the underlying conspecific avoidance processes are well documented across a wide range of taxa. Scent marking in particular is common to a large range of terrestrial mammals and is known to be fundamental for communication. However, despite its importance, exact quantification of the time-scales over which scent cues and messages persist remains elusive. Recent work by the present authors has begun to shed light on this problem by modelling animals as random walkers with scent-mediated interaction processes. Territories emerge as dynamic objects that continually change shape and slowly move without settling to a fixed location. As a consequence, the utilisation distribution of such an animal results in a slowly increasing home range, as shown for urban foxes (Vulpes vulpes). For certain other species, however, home ranges reach a stable state. The present work shows that stable home ranges arise when, in addition to scent-mediated conspecific avoidance, each animal moves as a central place forager. That is, the animal's movement has a random aspect but is also biased towards a fixed location, such as a den or nest site. Dynamic territories emerge but the probability distribution of the territory border locations reaches a steady state, causing stable home ranges to emerge from the territorial dynamics. Approximate analytic expressions for the animal's probability density function are derived. A programme is given for using these expressions to quantify both the strength of the animal's movement bias towards the central place and the time-scale over which scent messages persist. Comparisons are made with previous theoretical work modelling central place foragers with conspecific avoidance. Some insights into the mechanisms behind allometric scaling laws of animal space use are also given.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan R Potts & Stephen Harris & Luca Giuggioli, 2012. "Territorial Dynamics and Stable Home Range Formation for Central Place Foragers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(3), pages 1-11, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0034033
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0034033
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. V. M. Kenkre & L. Giuggioli & G. Abramson & G. Camelo-Neto, 2007. "Theory of hantavirus infection spread incorporating localized adult and itinerant juvenile mice," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 55(4), pages 461-470, February.
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    Cited by:

    1. Theng, Meryl & Prowse, Thomas A.A. & Delean, Steven & Cassey, Phillip & Bracis, Chloe, 2024. "Integrating resource memory and cue-based territoriality to simulate movement dynamics: a process-explicit and pattern-oriented approach," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 487(C).
    2. Coates, Julia H. & Hovel, Kevin A., 2014. "Incorporating movement and reproductive asynchrony into a simulation model of fertilization success for a marine broadcast spawner," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 283(C), pages 8-18.

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