Long‐term movements and home‐range changes: Rapid territory shifts in meerkats

Abstract

Territoriality and stable home ranges are a common space‐use pattern among animals. These ranges provide its inhabitants with important resources and thus favourable territories are associated with an increased fitness. While the role of territory quality and changes of territory ownership have often been investigated, the changes of territorial boundaries have been less studied. Here, we investigated space‐use changes in a social mammal species, applying a novel analytical approach, calculating long‐term dissimilarity in space use using distancematrices based on periodic utilization distributions. This approach makes it possible to identify different space‐use patterns, which cannot be distinguished by only considering changes between consecutive time periods. We analysed meerkat (Suricata suricatta) movements of a total of 24 different groups over a 16‐year period, resulting in 134 group years. We then correlated the identified home‐range changes to life‐history events and possible environmental drivers. Groups had stable territories for several years before they abandoned their home range mostly to move quickly to new areas where they again remained for several years. Of 26 identified sudden shifts, 22 occurred in the summer months and often involved distances larger than the original home‐range size. Home‐range movements that were close together in time were often also spatially clustered and moved in a similar direction. These shifts were often preceded by more frequent interactions between groups, but did not seem to be a product of direct displacements by other groups. The normalized difference vegetation index as a measure of food production and social factors such as dominance changes did not correlate to changes. Against our expectation space‐use changes were not accumulations of small changes, but more often involved long‐distance moves into unknown ranges. This means that the groups enter areas where they cannot profit from local knowledge. The methods used identify episodes of long stability alternated by sudden changes in meerkats and in general provides insight into long‐term space use. Our methods can be used to analyse long‐term space use, either within or across species.

Intergroup aggression in meerkats

“…Although we did not visit every group every day, we were able to establish whether the group changed sleeping burrow in the evening after an intergroup interaction in 295 cases. Since meerkats typically move 0.5-1 km each day, but have territories of 2-5 km 2 , sleeping burrow changes usually result in the group foraging in a different set of locations [43]. We compared the post-interaction rates of burrow movement with a baseline figure calculated by randomly sampling 10 000 group-day observations across the study period and calculating whether the group moved sleeping burrow on that day.…”

Disentangling influence over group speed and direction reveals multiple patterns of influence in moving meerkat groups

“…The dispersed nature of prey is reflected in the groups’ movement dynamics: throughout the day meerkat groups typically move in a relatively slow, continuous fashion while simultaneously foraging. Though individuals forage independently, typically 1–10 m from their nearest neighbors 28 , groups remain highly cohesive while navigating 2–5 km 2 territories 29 . Meerkats have a highly developed vocal repertoire 30 and calls have been shown to play an important role in maintaining cohesion 31 , 32 and in initiating rapid travel when relocating 15 , returning to a sleeping burrow 33 , or as a predator avoidance response 34 .…”

The impacts of heat stress on animal cognition: Implications for adaptation to a changing climate

“…6 6 There are a number of animal populations with available long‐term life‐history datasets worldwide. Examples of these are a meerkat ( Suricata suricatta ) population that has been monitored in South Africa since 1993 (Kranstauber et al, 2020; The Kalahari Meerkat Project, 2021), booted eagles ( Hieraaetus pennatus ) in Spain since 1998 (Jiménez‐Franco et al, 2020), great tits ( Parus major ) (The Wytham Tit Project, 2016) and red deers ( Cervus elaphus ) (Isle of Rum red deer Project, 2021) in Great Britain since 1947 and 1972, respectively, chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii ) in Tanzania since 1960 (Bray & Gilby, 2020), banded mongooses ( Mungos mungo ) in Uganda since 1995 (Banded Mongoose Research Project, 2016; Vitikainen et al, 2019), and mountain goats and bighorn sheep in Canada since the early 1980s (Festa‐Bianchet et al, 2019). …”