Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
Am Nat. 2013 Sep;182(3):E73-82. doi: 10.1086/671260. Epub 2013 Jul 15.
Although territorial animals are able to maintain exclusive use of certain regions of space, movement data from neighboring individuals often suggest overlapping home ranges. To explain and unify these two aspects of animal space use, we use recently developed mechanistic models of collective animal movement. We apply our approach to a natural experiment on an urban red fox (Vulpes vulpes) population that underwent a rapid decline in population density due to a sarcoptic mange epizooty. By extracting details of movement and interaction strategies from location data, we show how foxes alter their behavior, taking advantage of sudden population-level changes by acquiring areas vacated due to neighbor mortality, while ensuring territory boundaries remain contiguous. The rate of territory border movement increased eightfold as the population declined and the foxes' response time to neighboring scent reduced by a third. By demonstrating how observed, fluctuating territorial patterns emerge from movements and interactions of individual animals, our results give the first data-validated, mechanistic explanation of the elastic disc hypothesis, proposed nearly 80 years ago.
尽管具有领域性的动物能够维持对特定区域空间的排他性使用，但来自邻近个体的移动数据常常表明它们的家域存在重叠。为了解释和统一动物空间使用的这两个方面，我们使用了最近开发的集体动物运动机制模型。我们将该方法应用于一个关于城市红狐（ Vulpes vulpes ）种群的自然实验，该种群由于疥螨爆发而导致种群密度迅速下降。通过从位置数据中提取移动和相互作用策略的细节，我们展示了狐狸如何通过利用由于邻居死亡而腾出的区域来改变它们的行为，同时确保领地边界保持连续，从而利用突发的种群水平变化。随着种群的减少，领地边界移动的速度增加了八倍，而狐狸对邻居气味的反应时间减少了三分之一。通过展示观察到的、波动的领地模式如何从个体动物的运动和相互作用中出现，我们的结果为近 80 年前提出的弹性盘假说提供了第一个经过数据验证的机制解释。
