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There is a limbo under the moon: what social interactions tell us about the floaters’ underworld

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Abstract

The ultimate and proximate causes of natal dispersal have been extensively investigated, but the behaviour of dispersers in relation to social interactions has been largely neglected. Here, we investigated the social organisation of floating individuals during their dispersal by analysing the behaviour of 40 radio-tagged eagle owls Bubo bubo during the wandering and stop phases of dispersal. Unexpectedly, eagle owl floaters mixed with conspecifics independently of their sex, age, phase of dispersal, birthplace, health status and habitat features, showing an ‘underworld’ of interactions characterised by the absence of obvious social organisation or short-term strategies. Non-breeding owls were not transient floaters that occurred at numerous sites for short periods of time but rather had fairly stable home ranges: they attempted to settle as soon as possible within well-defined home ranges. The spatial distribution pattern of floaters and high rates of home range overlap support the prediction that floating individuals are not spatially segregated, challenging the expectation that dominance by size, age and/or health status may determine the exclusive use of some portions of the dispersal area. Finally, (1) the short distances among conspecifics and the extensive home range overlaps allowed us to discard the possibility that neighbouring floaters represent a real cost during dispersal and (2) floater interactions showed a lack of clear mechanisms for avoidance of kin competition among offspring or inbreeding.

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Acknowledgements

Vincent Bretagnolle, Erkki Korpimäki and an anonymous referee helped us to significantly improve the first draft of the manuscript. This work was funded by two research projects of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (CGL2004-02780/BOS and CGL2008-02871/BOS; with FEDER co-financing), the Ministry of Education and Science−C.S.I.C. (Proyectos Intramurales Especiales, DG-2606-PC), the Junta of Andalucía (Excellence Project, RNM-5090) and LICOR43. V.P. also received a grant from the Spanish Secretaría General de Universidades, Ministry of Education (Salvador de Madariaga Program), and M.M.D was a recipient of a post-doctoral fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and a post-doctoral grant (#140367) from the Finnish Academy.

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

The experiments comply with the current laws of the country in which they were performed (we marked owls under the Junta de Andalucía-Consejería de Medio Ambiente authorizations SCFFS-AFR/GGG RS-260/02 and SCFFS-AFR/CMM RS-1904/02)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Conservation Biology, Estación Biológica de Doñana, C.S.I.C., c/Americo Vespucio s/n, 41092, Seville, Spain

    Vincenzo Penteriani & María del Mar Delgado

  2. Finnish Museum of Natural History, Zoological Museum, University of Helsinki, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Vincenzo Penteriani

  3. Metapopulation Research Group, Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    María del Mar Delgado

Authors
  1. Vincenzo Penteriani
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  2. María del Mar Delgado
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Correspondence to Vincenzo Penteriani.

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Communicated by E. Korpimäki

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Electronic supplementary material 1

Patterns of the number of neighbours, permanence period, distances among neighbours and size and overlap of temporary settlement areas with respect to the sex, phases of dispersal, birthplace and early breeding attempts of floaters (1A) and for the interactions between sexes, phases of dispersal and birthplace (1B). Although minor but non-significant differences were found (see text), the relationships among floating eagle owls appeared to be independent of the social environment and the various stages of the dispersal process. (DOC 314 kb) (DOC 314 kb)

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Penteriani, V., del Mar Delgado, M. There is a limbo under the moon: what social interactions tell us about the floaters’ underworld. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 66, 317–327 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-011-1279-y

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