Department of Behavioural Ecology and Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Seewiesen, Germany.
Oecologia. 2010 Mar;162(3):609-15. doi: 10.1007/s00442-009-1509-4.
In animals, competition for space and resources often results in territorial behaviour. The size of a territory is an important correlate of fitness and is primarily determined by the spatial distribution of resources and by interactions between competing individuals. Both of these determinants, alone or in interaction, could lead to spatial non-independence of territory size (i.e. spatial autocorrelation). We investigated the presence and magnitude of spatial autocorrelation (SAC) in territory size using Monte Carlo simulations of the most widely used territory measures. We found significant positive SAC in a wide array of competition-simulated conditions. A meta-analysis of territory size data showed that SAC is also a feature of territories mapped based on behavioural observations. Our results strongly suggest that SAC is an intrinsic trait of any territory measure. Hence, we recommend that appropriate statistical methods should be employed for the analysis of data sets where territory size is either a dependent or an explanatory variable.
在动物中，对空间和资源的竞争通常会导致领地行为。领地的大小是适应度的一个重要指标，主要由资源的空间分布和竞争个体之间的相互作用决定。这两个决定因素，单独或相互作用，都可能导致领地大小的空间非独立性（即空间自相关）。我们使用最广泛使用的领地测量方法的蒙特卡罗模拟来研究领地大小的空间自相关（SAC）的存在和程度。我们发现，在广泛的竞争模拟条件下，存在显著的正 SAC。对领地大小数据的荟萃分析表明，SAC 也是基于行为观察绘制的领地的一个特征。我们的研究结果强烈表明，SAC 是任何领地测量的固有特征。因此，我们建议在分析以领地大小为因变量或自变量的数据时，应采用适当的统计方法。
