Data from: Evidence of economical territory selection in a cooperative carnivore ...

As an outcome of natural selection, animals are likely adapted to select territories economically by maximizing benefits and minimizing costs of territory ownership. Theory and empirical precedent indicate that a primary benefit of many territories is exclusive access to food resources, and primary...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Sells, Sarah
Format: Dataset
Language:English
Published: Dryad 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.z612jm6bg
https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.z612jm6bg
Description
Summary:As an outcome of natural selection, animals are likely adapted to select territories economically by maximizing benefits and minimizing costs of territory ownership. Theory and empirical precedent indicate that a primary benefit of many territories is exclusive access to food resources, and primary costs of defending and using space are associated with competition, travel, and mortality risk. A recently-developed mechanistic model for economical territory selection provided numerous empirically testable predictions. We tested these predictions using location data from gray wolves (Canis lupus) in Montana, USA. The dataset included here contains the territory size estimates for each collared wolf and the characteristics of territories. ... : These values are specific to the time and place collected (see details in the manuscript). ...