Abstract
Space use by animals is usually considered in two horizontal dimensions, less often with a separate analysis of the vertical stratification. Studies on three-dimensional (3D) utilisation of space, with individual movements modelled simultaneously in three dimensions, appeared only recently. In ornithology, such approaches were applied to study home ranges of large birds tagged with radio and GPS transmitters or during visual observations of colour-banded passerine wintering birds and residents in the tropics, but to our knowledge, they were never used for studying 3D territories advertised by singing in passerines during the breeding period in the Palearctic Region. We studied the 3D territoriality of Willow Warblers Phylloscopus trochilus during the breeding period in the Kola Peninsula, Arctic Region, Northwest Russia. Using the method of Cooper et al. (Auk 131:681–693, 2014), we located points at which individually marked males sang using 3D coordinates and analysed 2D and 3D territories and their overlap. We found out that 2D methods, compared to 3D methods, overestimated individual spatial overlap by 8.5% and total spatial overlap by 16.7%. Thus, Willow Warblers in Arctic forests could partition their territorial space in three dimensions. In addition, using the overlap indices adopted for 3D data, we showed that birds could avoid the areas where territory overlap did occur. Furthermore, we demonstrated for the first time that an overestimation of the territory overlaps by 2D versus 3D methods grew higher as the number of neighbour territories increased.
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Data availability
The used unpublished script and datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available in the Figshare repository, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19361678.v3.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Konstantin Tirronen and Danila Panchenko for organizing the expeditions to the Kola Peninsula during which our fieldwork was carried out. We also would like to thank Dr Piepenburg, the Chief Editor of “Polar Biology”, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions and useful comments. The investigations comply with the current laws of the Russian Federation. The paper was prepared while implementing activities under Russian Science Foundation Grant No. 23-24-00092, https://rscf.ru/project/23-24-00092/.
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MM and SS: conceived, designed and conducted field research. SS: analysed data. MM: wrote the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the manuscript.
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All aspects of the study were planned and executed on the principles that observers must not injure birds in conformity with the “Guiding principles in the care and use of animals”. Capturing, banding and observations were conducted according to the Federal Law of the Russian Federation No. 52 dated 24.04.1995 (ed. 11.06.2021) “regarding the animal kingdom” (24.04.1995).
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Matantseva, M.V., Simonov, S.A. Two- and three-dimensional territories and territory overlap of Willow Warblers Phylloscopus trochilus in Arctic forests. Polar Biol 46, 881–893 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-023-03172-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-023-03172-2