Territory and Navigation Part 1 - Territory

Territoriality Lots of ways to define it Nicest example I’ve seen is by Nick Davies When animals are more spaced out than you would expect by chance (Davies (1978) When animals are more spaced out than you would expect by chance (Davies (1978)

When should an animal be territorial? Optimality Baby! Functionally, an animal should only defend a territory when the costs < Benefits Basically, territoriality should only occur when a resource is both scarce AND defensible

Some examples Golden Winged Sunbirds (Gill and Wolf) The resource is flowers But flower number is equal

So what is it then? Not flowers per se But the floral density

We probably should look at fitness Does territory size affect quality of mating You know what they say about guys with big territories…… Certainly seems to eh!

What about when the territory has no resources? Lek breeding Lots of ungulates do it Lots of birds do it Basically, males just hang out Wait for females to make the choice

Leks Central Territory? Right time Might be a display Might have something to do with territory selection later on? The following graph is for mature audiences only……

Conclusions Many animals are territorial Usually about defensible resources Optimality models are easy to do here, you can often get fitness measures Currency is easy, once you know what the resrouce is