Relating Body Size to the Rate of Home Range Use in Mammals

Abstract

Abstract. The area occupied or traversed by an animal is a function of the time period considered, but few empirical estimates of the temporal component of home range use are available. We used a statistic called the "time to independence" to make an ecologically meaningful estimate of the amount of time required for an individual to traverse its home range. Data from 23 species of terrestrial mammals indicated the existence of a sizedependent time scale governing the rate of home range use. Foraging mode influenced the rate of home range use; central place foragers traversed their home ranges approximately five times as rapidly as comparably sized noncentral place foragers.Numerous physiological measures of time are related to body mass raised to the V* power. Our results suggest that the time scale governing the rate of space use by mammals is related similarly to body mass. This relationship permits a more critical examination of factors thought to influence home range size, including habitat productivity and social organization.

A groundwater-fed coastal inlet as habitat for the Caribbean queen conch Lobatus gigas—an acoustic telemetry and space use analysis

“…The home range is the geographic area to which an organism normally confines its activity (Worton 1987). This area provides information on food distribution and foraging behaviour as well as social interactions between individuals and predator− prey relationships (Swihart et al 1988, McLoughlin & Ferguson 2000. Home ranges are calculated from an individual animal's movement path, in the marine environment recorded by mark−recapture or acoustic telemetry surveys.…”

Ranging patterns of bottlenose dolphins living in oceanic waters: implications for population structure

“…com petition. predation and rcproducti~e strategies (McNab 1963;Damuth 1981;Swihart et al 1988;Sande ll 1989). Among these, variati on in prey availability is considered one of the most im portant factors.…”

Ecological correlates of home‐range size in spring–summer for female roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) in a deciduous woodland

“…Swihart, Slade & Bergstrom, 1988), sex and age (Cederlund & Sand, 1994;Relyea, Lawrence & Demarais, 2000), reproductive status (Bertrand et al, 1996), season (Nicholson, Bowyer & Kie, 1997), availability of forage (Tufto, Andersen & Linnell, 1996;Powell, Zimmerman & Seaman, 1997;Relyea et al, 2000), availability of water (Hervert & Krausman, 1986;Bowers, Welch & Carr, 1990), fragmentation of landscape (Kie et al, 2002), trophic level (Harestad & Bunnell, 1979), subspecies (Kie et al, 2002), and intra- (Riley & Dood, 1984) and interspecific competition (Loft, Kie & Menke, 1993). Interspecific variation in home ranges has been studied in some depth (Gittleman & Harvey, 1982;Lindstedt, Miller & Burskirk, 1986), but there has been little work on the causes of intraspecific variation in homerange sizes.…”