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Effects of food availability on dispersal and cub sex ratio in the Mednyi Arctic fox

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Abstract

Since the Pleistocene, Arctic foxes, Alopex lagopus, on Mednyi Island in the North Pacific have been isolated in a small area with rich food resources and no other terrestrial carnivores. This situation provides an unusually simple system within which the effect of food dispersion on demography and social organisation was examined. We studied the composition, location and dispersal of 67 Arctic fox groups and mapped their major food resources (seabird colonies) during 1994–2000 on Mednyi. We compared our observations with the predictions of models of sex-ratio determination. Our observations are most consistent with the predictions of Julliard's (2000) model, where mothers are expected to produce more offspring of the most dispersing sex in low-quality habitats, and more offspring of the most philopatric sex in high-quality habitats. The polygynous foxes on Mednyi Island lived where the principal food resources were patchily distributed (present on 11% of the shoreline), and cub survival to dispersal age or reproductive adult was higher in rich (25/45) than in poor (24/79) home ranges. Furthermore, dispersal was strongly sex-biased: most females (60%) remained on their natal ranges, whereas very few males (9%) did so. Significantly more female than male cubs (54 compared with 24) emerged from dens in resource rich ranges, whereas the sex ratio on poor ranges was approximately equal (51 females and 56 males). While our observations are also to some extent consistent with the local resource enhancement (LRE) hypothesis (which predicts a bias towards the sex most likely to cooperate with parents), this does not account for the observed spatial variability.

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Acknowledgments

The study would not have been possible without the long-term logistical support and organisational help of Aleksandr Aboliz, Aleksandr Boltnev, Aleksandr Burdin and Vladimir Burkanov. The following have contributed to data collection: Ilija Volodin, Alexey Zimenko, Evgeny Mamaev, Dmitry Glazov, Ekaterina Vorobieva, Anna Goltsman, Filip Nagornev, Olga Filatova, Karl-Heinz Frommolt, Antje Jakupi and Ekaterina Jikia. We are grateful to Vladimir Vertjankin, Vladimir Fomin, Sergey Zagrebelnyi and Aleksandr Stegaro for their assistance and help in the field. For advice and helpful comments, we are grateful to Dominic Johnson and Morris Gosling. The manuscript also benefited greatly from the input of Donald Strong, Ruth Cox and Dominique Berteaux. We are particularly grateful to Marco Festa-Bianchet for two thoughtful reviews at different stages of the development of this manuscript. The surveys were financed by the Actual Biology Foundation (Russia), Russian Foundation of Basic Sciences, the International Science Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Fauna & Flora Preservation Society (UK), Peoples' Trust for Endangered Species (UK), Tusk Force (UK) and INTAS. Since 1994 this project has been under the auspices of the IUCN/SSC Canid Specialist Group. The study was carried out under license (N UL-17-2881) from the Russian Federation Ministry of Regional Policy, and the Russian Federation National Committee of Nature Conservation and the Commander Island Nature Reserve. Animals were tagged with permission from the Russian Federation National Committee of Nature Conservation (license N0000209) and the Commander Island Nature Reserve

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Vertebrate Zoology, Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University, Moscow, 119899, Russia

    Mikhail Goltsman, Elena P. Kruchenkova & Sergei Sergeev

  2. Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, University of Oxford, Tubney House, Abingdon Road, Tubney, Abingdon, OX13 5QL, UK

    Elena P. Kruchenkova, Paul J. Johnson & David W. Macdonald

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  1. Mikhail Goltsman
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  2. Elena P. Kruchenkova
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  3. Sergei Sergeev
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  4. Paul J. Johnson
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  5. David W. Macdonald
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Correspondence to David W. Macdonald.

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Communicated by M. Festa-Bianchet

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Goltsman, M., Kruchenkova, E.P., Sergeev, S. et al. Effects of food availability on dispersal and cub sex ratio in the Mednyi Arctic fox. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 59, 198–206 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-005-0025-8

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