The Location Theory of Animal Populations: The Case of a Spatially Uniform Food Distribution

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Abstract
A locational model was used to examine territory size, individual energetics, and population distribution. Food distributed evenly across a landscape results in the formation of hexagonal territories, each with a centrally located nest site. Territory size is a function of the incremental costs of movement and competition and of the benefits of the greater food supply available with a longer radius of the search area. An analysis of the model indicated that (1) less efficient movers occupy larger territories at lower population densities than more efficient movers; (2) intraspecific competition is more likely to be observed in a population of more efficient movers than among less efficient movers; (3) changes in food density will decrease territory size, either increase or decrease food intake, and increase population less than proportionally; and (4) increasing the food density in a given bounded landscape increases the population less than proportionally, whereas increasing the size of the landscape, with food density held constant, increases the population exactly proportionally. The explicit treatment of space in this analysis imposes natural constraints on both population increases and decreases without appeal to ad hoc damping techniques. The analysis also demonstrates that territories must be considered in the context of a population; an analysis of individual territories in the absence of population phenomena (i.e., reproduction) results in serious theoretical shortcomings.

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