Territory (animal)

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Territory (animal)

In ethology

Ethology

Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior, and a branch of zoology .Although many naturalists have studied aspects of animal behavior through the centuries, the modern discipline of ethology is usually considered to have arisen with the work in the 1930s of Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and Austrian biologist Konrad Lorenz,...
, sociobiology

Sociobiology

Sociobiology is a Neo-Darwinism synthesis of scientific disciplines that attempts to explain social behavior in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages the behaviors may have....
and behavioral ecology

Behavioral ecology

Behavioral ecology is the study of the ecology and evolution basis for animal behavior, and the roles of behavior in enabling an animal to adapt to its environment ....
, the term territory refers to any sociographical area that an animal

Animal

Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the Kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life....
of a particular species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring....
consistently defends against conspecifics (and, occasionally, animals of other species). Animals that defend territories in this way are referred to as territorial.

History
The idea of animal territories was first introduced by the British ornithologist Eliot Howard

Eliot Howard

Henry Eliot Howard was an England ornithologist, noted for being one of the first to describe territoriality behaviours in birds in a detailed manner....
in a book published in 1920.

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In ethology

Ethology

Sociobiology

Behavioral ecology

Animal

Species

History

The idea of animal territories was first introduced by the British ornithologist Eliot Howard

Eliot Howard

Henry Eliot Howard was an England ornithologist, noted for being one of the first to describe territoriality behaviours in birds in a detailed manner....
in a book published in 1920. In the 1930s it was developed further by the American ornithologist Margaret Morse Nice

Margaret Morse Nice

Margaret Morse Nice was an United States ornithologist who made an extensive study of the life history of the Song Sparrow and was author of Studies in the Life History of the Song Sparrow ....
through research on the song sparrow

Song Sparrow

The Song Sparrow, Melospiza melodia, is a medium-sized American sparrow.Adults have brown upperparts with dark streaks on the back and are white underneath with dark streaking and a dark brown spot in the middle of the breast....
. It was widely popularised by Robert Ardrey

Robert Ardrey

Robert Ardrey was an United States playwright and screenwriter who returned to his Academia in anthropology and the behavioral sciences in the 1950s....
in his book The Territorial Imperative, and the popularity of this book led to an exaggerated perception of the importance of territory in social ethology. In fact only a minority of species maintain territories with well defined boundaries, within which they live and find all the resources they need. Some territories are shared by the animals around the same area and therefore it increases competition

Classic territories

Territorial animals defend areas that contain a nest, den or mating site and sufficient food resources for themselves and their young. Defense rarely takes the form of overt fights: more usually there is a highly noticeable display, which may be visual (as in the red breast of the robin), auditory (as in much bird song

Bird song

Bird vocalization includes both bird calls and bird songs. In non-technical use, bird songs are the bird sounds that are melodious to the human ear....
, or the calls of gibbon

Gibbon

Gibbons are the small apes in the family Hylobatidae. The family is divided into four genus based on their diploid chromosome number: Hylobates , Hoolock , Nomascus , and Symphalangus ....
s) or olfactory, through the deposit of scent marks. Many territorial mammals use scent-marking to signal the boundaries of their territories; the marks may be deposited by urination

Urination

Urination, also known as micturition, voiding, and, more rarely, emiction, is the process of disposing urine from the urinary bladder through the urethra to the outside of the body....
, by defecation

Defecation

Defecation is the final act of digestion by which organisms eliminate solid, semisolid or liquid waste material from the digestive tract via the anus....
, or by rubbing parts of the bodies that bear specialised scent gland

Scent gland

Scent glands are found in the genitals of most mammals and in various other parts of the body, such as the underarms of humans and the preorbital glands of deer....
s against the substrate. For example, dog

Dog

The dog is a domesticated subspecies of the Gray Wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties....
s and other canids scent-mark by urination and defecation, while cats scent-mark by rubbing their faces and flanks against objects. Many prosimian

Prosimian

Prosimians are a group of mammals that includes all primates except monkeys and apes. They include, among others, lemurs, the Aye-aye, bushbaby, and tarsiers....
s use territorial marking; for example, the Red-bellied Lemur

Red-bellied Lemur

The Red-bellied Lemur is a medium sized prosimian with a luxuriant chestnut brown coat. This lemur is Endemic to eastern Madagascar rainforests and is distinguished by patches of white skin below the eyes, giving rise to a "teardrop" effect, particularly conspicuous in the male....
creates territories for groups of two to ten individuals in the rainforest

Rainforest

Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with definitions setting minimum normal annual rainfall between 1750?2000 mm . The monsoon trough, alternately known as the intertropical convergence zone, plays a significant role in creating Earth's tropical rain forests....
s of eastern Madagascar

Madagascar

Madagascar, or Republic of Madagascar , is an island nation in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa. The main island, also called Madagascar, is the List of islands by area, and is home to 5% of the world's plant and animal species, of which more than 80% are Endemism to Madagascar....
by scent marking: the male Diademed Sifaka

Diademed Sifaka

The Diademed Sifaka is an endangered species of sifaka, one of the lemurs endemic to certain rainforests in eastern Madagascar. This species is one of the world's largest living lemurs, with a total adult length of approximately 105 centimetres , half of which is tail....
also scent marks defended territories in some of these same rainforests. The male Western fence lizard

Western fence lizard

The Western Fence Lizard is a common lizard of California and surrounding areas. It is also known as the Blue-belly.It is a member of the genus Sceloporus, and therefore is a spiny lizard....
defends a territory by posturing and combat, but less intensely after the mating season.

Invertebrates which show territorality include some ants and bees, and the owl limpet

Defense

Territories may be held by an individual, a mated pair, or a group. Territoriality is not a fixed property of a species: for example, robins

European Robin

The European Robin , or, in Anglophone Europe, simply Robin, is a small insectivorous passerine bird that was formerly classed as a member of the Thrush family , but is now considered to be an Old World flycatcher ....
defend territories as pairs during the breeding season and as individuals during the winter, while some nectarivore

Nectarivore

In zoology, a nectarivore is an animal which eats the sugar-rich nectar produced by flowering plants. Most nectarivores are insects or birds, but there are also nectarivorous mammals, notably several species of bats in the Southwestern United States and Mexico, as well as the Australian Honey Possum , and Geckos in Mauritius....
s defend territories only during the mornings (when plants are richest in nectar). In species that do not form pair bonds, male and female territories are often independent, in the sense that males defend territories only against other males, and females only against other females; in this case, if the species is polygynous

Polygyny

Polygyny is a form of polygamy, where a man has more than one recognized female sexual partner or wife at the one time. It is distinguished from a man who has a sexual partner outside marriage, such as a concubine, casual sexual partner, paramour, or other culturally recognized secondary partner....
, one male territory will probably contain several female territories, while in some polyandrous

Polyandry

In social anthropology and sociobiology, polyandry refers to a form of polygamy marriage , or other sexual union, in which one individual is married to two or more husbands at the same time....
species such as the Northern Jacana

Northern Jacana

The Northern Jacana or Northern Ja?ana is a wader which is a resident breeder from coastal Mexico to western Panama, and on Cuba, Jamaica and Hispaniola....
, this situation is reversed.

Quite often territories that only yield a single resource are defended. For example, European Blackbird

Blackbird

The Common Blackbird , also called Eurasian Blackbird, or simply Blackbird is a species of true thrush which breeds in Europe, Asia, and North Africa, and has been introduced species to Australia and New Zealand....
s may defend feeding territories that are distant from their nest sites, and in some species that form leks, for example the Uganda kob

Kob

The Kob is an antelope found across Sub-Saharan Africa from Senegal to Sudan. Found along the Northern Savanna, often seen in Murchison Falls and Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda; Garamba and Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as grassy floodplains of Southern Sudan....
(a grazing antelope

Grazing antelope

A grazing antelope is any of the species of antelope that make up the subfamily Hippotraginae in the family Bovidae, which also includes sheep, goats, and cattle....
), males defend the lek site (which is used only for mating).

Territoriality is only shown by a minority of species. More commonly, an individual or a group of animals will have an area that it habitually uses but does not necessarily defend; this is called its home range

Home range

Home range is a concept that can be traced back to a publication in 1943 by W. H. Burt, who constructed maps delineating the spatial extent or outside boundary of an animal's movement during the course of its everyday activities....
. The home ranges of different groups often overlap, and in the overlap areas the groups will tend to avoid each other rather than seeking to expel each other. Within the home range there may be a core area that no other individual group uses, but again this is as a result of avoidance rather than defense.

Behavioural ecologists have argued that food distribution determines whether a species will be territorial or not. Territoriality will emerge where there is a focused resource that provides enough for the individual or group, within a boundary that is small enough to be defended without the expenditure of too much effort.

Territoriality is least likely with insectivorous birds, where the food supply is plentiful but unpredictably distributed. Swift

Swift

The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows but are actually not closely related to those passerine species at all; swifts are in the separate order Apodiformes, which they share with the hummingbirds....
s rarely defend an area larger than the nest.

Conversely, large solitary (or paired) carnivores, such as bear

Bear

Bears are mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans, with the pinnipeds being their closest living relatives....
s and the bigger raptor

Bird of prey

Birds of prey are birds that hunt for food primarily on the wing, using their keen senses, especially vision. Their claws and beaks tend to be relatively large, powerful and adapted for tearing and/or piercing flesh....
s require an extensive protected area to guarantee their food supply. This territoriality will only break down when there is a glut of food, for example when Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear

The grizzly bear ', also known as the silvertip bear, is a subspecies of brown bear ' that lives in the uplands of western North America....
s are attracted to migrating salmon

Salmon

Salmon is the common name for several species of fish of the family Salmonidae. Several other fish in the family are called trout,the difference is often attributed to the migratory life of the salmon as compared to the residential behaviour of trout, this holds true for the Atlantic salmon....
.

Territory (animal)

History

Classic territories

Defense

See also

Further reading