Body mass as a predictive variable of home‐range size among Italian mammals and birds

Abstract

The existence of allometric relationships between home-range size and body mass was tested for 34 Italian mammals and 106 Italian birds. These allometries were investigated in relation to a carnivorous, omnivorous or herbivorous diet and, in the case of birds, also territoriality. Initially, non-phylogenetic comparative analyses were undertaken by fitting general linear models to data on average home-range size and average body mass obtained from the literature. Then, two phylogenetic trees for the studied species of mammals and birds were reconstructed and phylogenetic independent contrasts were applied in order to determine the influence of phylogeny on these relationships. For mammals, the type of diet proved to be a determining factor in defining the relationship between home-range size and body mass. Significant allometries were found with both conventional and phylogenetic analyses in all trophic groups. The results emphasized the importance of the spatial distribution of resources in understanding these allometries. For birds, conventional analysis showed significant relationships between home-range size and body mass, and pointed to the importance of both diet and territorial systems in understanding these allometries. After controlling for phylogeny, significant allometries were found only for those birds for which information on the size of their feeding territory was available. Regardless of the complexity of factors influencing the home-range size of a species, the outcomes of this study support the notion of the existence of an allometry between home-range size and body mass among Italian mammals and birds, suggesting that further developments of this area of investigation may prove worthwhile

Home-range and space use by Didelphis albiventris (Lund 1840) (Marsupialia, Didelphidae) in Mutum Island, Paraná river, Brazil

“…Our findings also suggests that body mass is a significant factor determining the size of the home-range for many didelphids (Vieira & Cunha 2008), which is already known for mammals as a primary determinant of home-range for (Ottaviani et al 2006). The significant relation of home-range size with the body mass of animals is widely reported.…”

“…The significant relation of home-range size with the body mass of animals is widely reported. Larger animals have larger home-ranges (Mcnab 1963, Krebs & Davies 1996, Cáceres 2003, Martins 2004, Ottaviani et al 2006. Other Brazilian marsupials also responded directly to this relationship, for example, G. microtarsus (Wagner 1842) (Martins 2004) and D. aurita (Wied-Neuwied 1826) (Cáceres 2003), both species considered omnivorous (Santori & Moraes 2006).…”

The Life Cycle of Toxoplasma gondii in the Natural Environment

“…In rodents and lagomorphs, home-range size, energy requirements and life expectancy are all expected to be related to the probability to encounter T. gondii oocysts. As these traits are correlated to body size [102,103,104,46], large rodents species are more often found positive than small ones [46]. Body size is thus a relevant indicator of prevalence in a given species, and also an indicator of the risk for predators to get infected by preying on that species.…”

Extrapolating population size from the occupancy–abundance relationship and the scaling pattern of occupancy

“…To determine a ''sufficiently fine'' individual-area scale for estimating abundance from the SPO models, an allometric relationship between body mass (M; in kilograms, kg) and home range (H; in square kilometers, km 2 ) was used to determine the ''individual area'' of each species (i.e., the size of the home range defended by an individual; Peters 1983, Ottaviani et al 2006). Thus, we chose to use the allometry of individual areas to calculate the ''sufficiently fine scale'' for estimating species abundance: for carnivores, H ¼ 0.6M 0.52 (Peters 1983), omnivores, H ¼ 0.566M 0.881 (Ottaviani et al 2006), and herbivores, H ¼ 0.04M 1.0 (Peters 1983). Data on body size and dietary requirements (49% of the 610 bird species are carnivorous; 45% omnivorous; 6% herbivorous) were obtained from Hockey et al (2005).…”