Abstract
The Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus), occupying tundra habitats with highly variable resource distribution, is a convenient research model for studying the impact of food availability on space use. Previous studies have shown that the Arctic fox home ranges can vary from 4 to 125 km2. In areas with abundant food resources, home range sizes are smaller and overlap increases. It is theoretically assumed that with an excess of resources, territoriality should disappear. We investigated a fox settlement at the Northern fur seal rookery on Bering Island (North Pacific). We used GPS collars to track nine foxes in the summer of 2014 and 2016. GPS locations were recorded at 5-min intervals. In the home range estimation, we used the Brownian bridge movement model. We also calculated home range sizes using 100% minimum convex polygon (MCP100) and 95% fixed kernel methods to compare our results with previous studies. Home ranges were extremely small with an average of 0.5 km2 (range of 0.2–0.9 km2) by Brownian Bridge and 0.7 km2 (0.3–1.4 km2) by MCP100. We revealed no sex differences in home range size but discovered strong differentiation of activity spatial concentration between males and females. We found a surprisingly small overlap between neighboring foxes, reflecting high territoriality. This runs counter to the trend expected with an overabundant food source. We assume that the combination of the super small size of the home ranges and their exclusivity may be a feature of the island fox land tenure system, which prevents inbreeding and deters infanticide.
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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the staff of Nature and Biosphere Reserve "Commander Islands" who helped at all stages of the research. We are obliged to Liliya Doronina for her support with the GPS equipment, Galina Klink and Anastasia Dudorova, who participated in the field data collection, Anna Ploshnitsa and Eliezer Gurarie for critical reading of the manuscript, Andrey Tchabovsky and Ilya Volodin for their ideas at the early stages of the manuscript preparation. We are grateful to Dorothee Ehrich, Anders Angerbjörn, the anonymous referee, and the Chief editor, whose constructive suggestions and comments much improved the manuscript. We want to thank Emma Grier for proofreading. We gratefully thank Olga Belonovich, Vladimir and Natalia Fomin, and Ivan Vozhikov for logistical support at the field site. Olga Belonovich also provided the fur seal survey data that greatly enriched our study.
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This study was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grants 13–04-00302 and 15–29-02459).
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Conceptualization—MG, AP, EK, and VR. Formal analysis and software—AP. Funding acquisition—AP, MG, and VR. Field studies—AP, EK, MG, and YM. Methodology—MG, EK, AP, VR, and YM. Supervision—MG and VR. Writing, review, and editing—AP, MG, and EK. Visualization—AP. Resources—AP. All authors read and approved the manuscript.
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All arctic fox trapping and handling procedures were approved by the expert committee of the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment of the Russian Federation. In addition, the field studies were authorized by special permits issued by the Federal Supervisory Natural Resources Management Service (Moscow, Russia).
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Pletenev, A., Kruchenkova, E., Mikhnevich, Y. et al. The overabundance of resources leads to small but exclusive home ranges in Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) on Bering Island. Polar Biol 44, 1427–1443 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-021-02888-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00300-021-02888-3