Spatial clumping of sexually receptive females induces space sharing among male voles

Abstract

The spatial organization of individuals in populations (their spacing system) can be highly variable even among populations of the same species¹. As spacing systems have important consequences for ecological processes such as population regulation, competition and mating systems^2,3, there have been many attempts to explore factors that may cause this variation. For mammals, it has been argued that the spatial distribution of sexually receptive females is the most important factor determining the spacing system of males, whereas habitat characteristics are most important to females^4–6. This has been difficult to test experimentally as it requires manipulations of the spatial distribution of the opposite sex without changing other properties of the environment⁷. Here, I present a novel experimental procedure that can achieve this and demonstrate that the spatial distribution of the opposite sex in a population of voles is indeed an important determinant of the spacing system of males, but not of females. However, the effects on males are different from those predicted by many theoretical studies.