Territory (animal)

More commonly, an individual or a group of animals occupies an area that it habitually uses but does not necessarily defend; this is called its home range.The size and shape of a territory can vary according to its purpose, season, the amount and quality of resources it contains, or the geography.On average, a territory may be approximately 50 hectares (120 acres), with main setts normally at least 500 metres (1,600 ft) apart.Males start to establish small display territories two months ahead of the mating season.[10][11][12] Most commonly, this is accomplished by depositing strong-smelling substances contained in the urine, faeces, or, from specialised scent glands located on various areas of the body.When a wolf marks its territory, it lifts a hind leg and urinates on a scent post (usually an elevated position like a tree, rock, or bush).To do this, they perform a handstand to mark vertical surfaces, grasping the highest point with their feet while applying the scent.Some animals have prominent "badges" or visual displays to advertise their territory, often in combination with scent marking or auditory signals.[32] The red breast of the bird (i.e. badge) is highly visible when it sings (vocal marking) at the boundary of its territory.These are short-term signals transmitted only when the animal is present, but can travel long distances and over varied habitats.[42] Animals use a range of behaviours to intimidate intruders and defend their territories, but without engaging in fights which are expensive in terms of energy and the risk of injury.Such defense frequently involves a graded series of behaviours or displays that include threatening gestures (such as vocalizations, spreading of wings or gill covers, lifting and presentation of claws, head bobbing, tail and body beating) and finally, direct attack.For example, European robins defend territories as pairs during the breeding season but as individuals during the winter.These contrasting strategies depend on which intruder (familiar or unfamiliar) poses the greatest threat to the resident territory-holder.In selecting a territory, the size and quality play crucial roles in determining an animal's habitat.Behavioural ecologists have argued that food distribution determines whether a species is territorial or not, however, this may be too narrow a perspective.Several other type of resource may be defended including partners, potential mates, offspring, nests or lairs, display areas or leks.Territoriality emerges 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 excessive effort.Conversely, other insectivorous birds that occupy more constrained territories, such as the ground-nesting blacksmith lapwing may be very territorial, especially in the breeding season during which they not only threaten or attack many kinds of intruders, but have stereotyped display behaviour to deter conspecifics sharing neighbouring nesting spots.Commonly the resulting superimposition of the short-range repulsion onto the long-range attraction characteristically leads to the well-known roughly hexagonal spacing of nests.[51][52] Territory defence in male variegated pupfish (Cyprinodon variegatus) is dependent on the presence of females.Thus, this dear enemy territoriality relationship is not a fixed pattern but a flexible one likely to evolve with social and ecological circumstances.For example, in Euglossa imperialis, a non-social bee species, males have been observed to occasionally form aggregations of fragrance-rich territories, considered to be leks.These leks serve only a facultative purpose for this species, in which the more fragrance-rich sites there are, the greater the number of habitable territories.In the European pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca), researchers assert that males exhibit polyterritoriality to deceive females of the species into entering into polygynous relationships.The observation that males travelled long distances, ranging from 200m to 3.5 km, to find a second mate supports this argument.