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Multiple socioecological factors influence timing of natal dispersal in kangaroo rats

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Abstract

Natal dispersal is an important event in the life history of many species. Timing of natal dispersal can influence survivorship and subsequent reproductive success. A variety of individual proximal factors determine if and when offspring disperse from the natal territory by influencing the costs of dispersing and the benefits of delaying dispersal. I examined the influence of multiple factors on dispersal age in the banner-tailed kangaroo rat (Dipodomys spectabilis), a solitary species lacking extreme sex-biased dispersal. I used an information theoretic approach to compare Cox proportional hazards regression models of dispersal age for 121 offspring over a 3-year period consisting of low and high population densities. The top-ranked models indicated that dispersal age was influenced by a combination of socioecological factors related to resource competition, environmental conditions, kin competition, and a lesser extent sex. Circumstances that likely reduced the probability of successful dispersal such as intense resource competition at high population density and being born earlier in the breeding season when environmental conditions were poor lead to longer delays in natal dispersal. Offspring in larger litters also dispersed earlier possibly to avoid competition with kin. Sex was weakly supported in top models but may only influence dispersal age at high population densities. These results suggest that the proximal factors that trigger dispersal are influenced by a combination of multiple effects related to the costs of dispersing and the benefits of remaining at home, even in species that do not form long-term social groups or have extreme sex-biased dispersal.

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Acknowledgments

I thank J. Brown, S. Collins, J. Edelman, M. Friggens, J. Johnson, A. Kodric-Brown, J. Maldonado, V. Mathis, G. Roemer, and numerous undergraduate students for technical and field assistance with this study. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for providing insightful comments on this manuscript. This work was supported by the Sevilleta Long Term Ecological Research Site Graduate Student Summer Grant; American Society of Mammalogists Shadle Fellowship and Grant-in-Aid; Southwestern Association of Naturalists Howard McCarley Student Research Award; T & E, Inc. Grant for Conservation Biology Research; and the University of New Mexico Gaudin Scholarship in Mammalogy, Grove Summer Scholarship, Student Research Allocation Committee Research Grant, Biology Graduate Student Organization Research Grant, and Graduate Research Development Fund. I received financial support from an NSF Teaching Fellowship in K-12 Education and the University of New Mexico Biocomplexity and Regents’ Graduate Fellowships.

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All experiments reported in this article comply with the current laws of the country in which they were performed.

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The author declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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  1. Department of Biology, University of West Georgia, Carrollton, GA, 30118, USA

    Andrew J. Edelman

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  1. Andrew J. Edelman
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Correspondence to Andrew J. Edelman.

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Communicated by P. B. Banks

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Edelman, A.J. Multiple socioecological factors influence timing of natal dispersal in kangaroo rats. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 68, 1123–1131 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-014-1723-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-014-1723-x

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