Ims R A
Department of Biology, University of Oslo, Norway.
Nature. 1988 Oct 6;335(6190):541-3. doi: 10.1038/335541a0.
The spatial organization of individuals in populations (their spacing system) can be highly variable even among populations of the same species. As spacing systems have important consequences for ecological processes such as population regulation, competition and mating systems, there have been many attempts to explore factors that may cause this variation. For mammals, it has been argued that the spatial distribution of sexually receptive females is the most important factor determining the spacing system of males, whereas habitat characteristics are most important to females. This has been difficult to test experimentally as it requires manipulations of the spatial distribution of the opposite sex without changing other properties of the environment. Here, I present a novel experimental procedure that can achieve this and demonstrate that the spatial distribution of the opposite sex in a population of voles is indeed an important determinant of the spacing system of males, but not of females. However, the effects on males are different from those predicted by many theoretical studies.
种群中个体的空间组织（其分布系统）即使在同一物种的不同种群之间也可能有很大差异。由于分布系统对诸如种群调节、竞争和交配系统等生态过程有重要影响，因此人们进行了许多尝试来探究可能导致这种差异的因素。对于哺乳动物来说，有人认为处于性接受期的雌性的空间分布是决定雄性分布系统的最重要因素，而栖息地特征对雌性最为重要。这很难通过实验来验证，因为这需要在不改变环境其他属性的情况下操纵异性的空间分布。在此，我提出一种能够实现这一点的新颖实验方法，并证明田鼠种群中异性的空间分布确实是雄性分布系统的一个重要决定因素，但不是雌性的。然而，对雄性的影响与许多理论研究所预测的不同。
