Quantifying behavioral changes in territorial animals caused by sudden population declines.

摘要: AbstractAlthough territorial animals are able to maintain exclusive use of certain regions space, movement data from neighboring individuals often suggest overlapping home ranges. To explain and unify these two aspects animal space use, we recently developed mechanistic models collective movement. We apply our approach a natural experiment on an urban red fox (Vulpes vulpes) population that underwent rapid decline in density due sarcoptic mange epizooty. By extracting details interaction strategies location data, show how foxes alter their behavior, taking advantage sudden population-level changes by acquiring areas vacated neighbor mortality, while ensuring territory boundaries remain contiguous. The rate border increased eightfold as the declined foxes’ response time scent reduced third. demonstrating observed, fluctuating patterns emerge movemen...