Arbon Josh J, Morris-Drake Amy, Kern Julie M, Giuggioli Luca, Radford Andrew N
School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol, BS8 1TQ, United Kingdom.
School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England, Elm Avenue, Armidale NSW 2351, Australia.
Behav Ecol. 2024 Oct 5;35(6):arae082. doi: 10.1093/beheco/arae082. eCollection 2024 Nov-Dec.
When making decisions about resource use, social species must integrate not only environmental factors but also the influence of opportunities and costs associated with group living. Bigger groups are expected to move further and to need access to larger areas for adequate food acquisition, but the relationships with group size can vary seasonally and with reproductive stage. Shelters are often more consistent in availability than food, but their use relates to factors such as predator defense and parasite transmission that are themselves influenced by group size and seasonality. Here, we used long-term data to investigate resource use and associated movement in a wild population of dwarf mongooses (). We found that bigger groups occupied larger home ranges, moved larger daily distances and covered more daily area than smaller ones, while environmental greenness (measured by normalized difference vegetation index [NDVI]) influenced daily movements in the breeding season but not the non-breeding season. Both assessed axes of seasonality also had pronounced effects on shelter use: mongoose groups used more unique sleeping burrows, and switched between burrows more often, in the breeding season, but also switched more when environmental greenness was higher. By investigating specific periods within the breeding season, we revealed the constraints that vulnerable, poorly mobile offspring impose on both group movements and burrow use, highlighting a potentially overlooked cost of reproduction. Our results show how both social and environmental factors can affect key resource-use decisions, demonstrating potential costs and benefits to group living within distinctly seasonal geographic areas.
在做出资源利用决策时，社会性物种不仅必须综合考虑环境因素，还要考虑与群体生活相关的机会和成本的影响。预计较大的群体移动距离更远，需要更大的区域来获取足够的食物，但与群体大小的关系可能会随季节和繁殖阶段而变化。庇护所的可用性通常比食物更稳定，但其使用与诸如捕食者防御和寄生虫传播等因素有关，而这些因素本身又受群体大小和季节性的影响。在这里，我们利用长期数据研究了矮獴野生种群的资源利用及相关移动情况。我们发现，较大的群体比较小的群体占据更大的家域，每日移动距离更远，覆盖的每日活动区域更大，而环境绿化程度（通过归一化植被指数[NDVI]衡量）在繁殖季节影响每日移动，但在非繁殖季节则不然。季节性的两个评估轴对庇护所使用也有显著影响：獴群在繁殖季节使用更多独特的睡眠洞穴，并且更频繁地在洞穴之间切换，但在环境绿化程度较高时切换也更多。通过研究繁殖季节内的特定时期，我们揭示了脆弱、行动不便的幼崽对群体移动和洞穴使用造成的限制，突出了繁殖过程中一个可能被忽视的成本。我们的研究结果表明，社会和环境因素如何能够影响关键的资源利用决策，展示了在明显季节性的地理区域内群体生活的潜在成本和收益。
