JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. British Ecological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Animal Ecology. Summary 1. Previous work on red grouse (Lagopus lagopus scoticus) on a north-east Scottish moor showed that recruitment of young to the territorial population in autumn largely determined changes in numbers between springs. 2. This paper analyses territory locations of individually marked fathers and sons during a big cyclic-type population fluctuation in 1969-77. 3. In years of increasing numbers, sons took territories close to their fathers. When fathers did not keep their territories for another year, sons took territories on or close to their natal territories. In years of declining numbers, kin moved further from their natal areas to establish territories.
This fits ideas that some animal populations comprise distinct sub-populations or demes. It is consistent with a model whereby changes in recruitment dependpartly on the size of such demes, and cyclic declines in numbers are due to greater strife because demes are smaller and neighbouring cocks less closely related than during the increase phase. 5. Over the winter, territorial cocks had a lower rate of aggressive boundary disputes with territorial neighbours which were close kin than with those which were not closely related. 6. During two population fluctuations, the rates of territorial cocks' song flights and boundary disputes in winter were related to the young cocks' relative recruitment rate to the territorial population. Thus, winter interaction rates were low in winters when enough young cocks had been reared in the population to supply the observed recruitment, and high when the observed recruitment must have included immigrants. 7. The dispute rate also tended to reach its maximum one year after peak densities, and then to decrease.
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