Territory and Navigation Part 1 Territory Territoriality Lots

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 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