A hierarchical pattern of limiting factors helps explain variation in home range size

Home range dynamics of the American lobster,Homarus americanus

“…Therefore, if they are evicted, or return to find another lobster in their shelter, they often seek another shelter rather than defend their ''home''. It is generally accepted that, for terrestrial animals, home range size scales with animal size because larger animals require more food and thus larger areas for foraging (McNab 1963;Reiss 1988;McLoughlin and Ferguson 2000). Currently, there is no consensus about whether this holds true for aquatic animals and to our knowledge this issue has not been addressed in aquatic invertebrates because of the paucity of information about their home ranges.…”

Movements of Marine Fish and Decapod Crustaceans: Process, Theory and Application

“…For land mammals (McNab, 1963;Reiss, 1988;McLoughlin and Ferguson, 2000) and freshwater fish (Minns, 1995) studies have found that home range scaled allometrically with body size. Many authors have found a similar relationship for some marine fish (Sale, 1978;Fitch and Shapiro, 1990;Kramer and Chapman, 1999;Overholtzer and Motta, 1999;Meyer et al, 2000;Shepherd and Clarkson, 2001) but not for others (Zeller, 1997).…”

“…For several shark species, males and females have been found to segregate into single sex aggregations and this behaviour is an important factor in the structuring of populations in time and space (Klimley, 1987;Sims et al, 2001). For terrestrial animals, McLoughlin and Ferguson (2000) suggested that a hierarchical pattern of ecological and physiological factors including body size, seasonal food availability, predation and even climate change might determine home range size. It is not clear exactly which factors control home range use for marine animals, but it is likely to be a result of a combination of life-history characteristics, body size, resource requirements, composition and spatial arrangement of resources, as well as inter-and intra specific-interactions.…”

Effect of individual incubation effort on home range size in two rallid species (Aves: Rallidae)

“…Independent of the impact on nest attentiveness, food availability is known to affect home range size by determining the area needed to obtain sufficient energy (McLoughlin and Ferguson 2000). Our models found no effect of invertebrate biomass on the home range sizes of Little Crakes and Water Rails, although such a lack of effect could potentially be explained in (at least) two different ways.…”

“…Although home range is a key issue in animal ecology, most studies focused primarily on its physiological or ecological determinants, such as body size, food availability, or population density (McLoughlin and Ferguson 2000), whereas behavioural traits have received little attention (e.g. Hingrat et al 2004).…”