Behavioral Adaptation to a Desert Environment: An Experimental Comparative Study of Food Hoarding

沙漠环境的行为适应：食物囤积的实验比较研究

• 批准号: 9211752
• 负责人: Stephen Jenkins
• 金额: $ 9.29万
• 依托单位: Board of Regents, NSHE, obo University of Nevada, Reno
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1992
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1992-08-15 至 1996-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9211752&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Behavioral; Adaptation; Desert; Environment; Experimental

Many animals store food in times of plenty for use later when resources are scarce. Two general types of food hoarding occur: storing large amounts of food in a centralized location such as a burrow (larder-hoarding), and scattering many small caches of food throughout an individual's home range (scatter-hoarding). Kangaroo rats are desert rodents that use food hoarding as a strategy for dealing with the unpredictability of desert environments. Coexisting kangaroo rats differ in their food- hoarding patterns: some species are larder-hoarders, others are primarily scatter-hoarders. This study will use laboratory and field experiments to test three hypotheses about differences in food-hoarding patterns of kangaroo rats. Specifically, because larger kangaroo rats are aggressively dominant to smaller ones, smaller animals such as Merriam's and Ord's kangaroo rats should larder-hoard fewer seeds, make more widely-spaced scatter-hoards and move caches more often in response to theft than larger animals such as Panamint and desert kangaroo rats. Dr. Jenkins will also compare different populations of the same species from sites with different suites of competitors, to test the prediction that hoarding behavior is adapted to the competitive environment encountered by members of a particular population. This study is important for several reasons. First, desert rodents have been model systems for studies of the role of competition in ecosystem structure and function. Although the pervasive influence of competition among desert rodents has been well established, specific behavioral mechanisms that mediate competition have received little attention. As a key behavioral adaptation of kangaroo rats to desert environments, food hoarding is likely to be closely connected to competition among species. Second, optimal foraging has been one of the most fruitful areas of study in behavioral ecology in recent years because of the productive interplay between development of theory and empirical tests of predictions derived from theoretical models. As an aspect of foraging behavior, work on food hoarding has been mainly descriptive to date. This experimental study of food hoarding by kangaroo rats will contribute to a broader perspective on food hoarding by placing it in the context of optimal foraging ecology. Third, scatter-hoarding animals are important agents of dispersal for the seeds of many plant species. This study of factors that cause kangaroo rats to scatter-hoard vs. larder-hoard will lead to greater understanding of interactions between these animals and desert plant populations, with consequent benefits for conservation of desert environments.

许多动物在资源稀缺时将食物存储在充足的时期供以后使用。 出现了两种一般类型的食物：在集中位置（例如洞穴（Larder-Hoarding））中存储大量食物，并在个人的家居范围内散布许多小型食物（散布储物）。 袋鼠大鼠是沙漠啮齿动物，使用食物ho积作为处理沙漠环境不可预测性的策略。 共存的袋鼠大鼠的食物ho积模式有所不同：有些物种是储藏剂，而另一些物种则主要是散落的。 这项研究将使用实验室和现场实验来检验有关袋鼠大鼠食物养育模式差异的三个假设。 具体而言，由于较大的袋鼠大鼠在较小的动物上积极地占主导地位，因此，梅里亚姆（Merriam's）和奥德（Merriam's）和奥尔德（Ord）的袋鼠大鼠的大鼠应该减少种子，使种子更少，变得更广泛的散布散布和更频繁地响应于盗窃动物（例如panamint and kangaroo kangaroo大鼠）而更频繁地移动caches。 詹金斯（Jenkins）博士还将比较来自具有不同竞争者套件的地点的同一物种的不同种群，以测试ho积行为适应特定人群成员所遇到的竞争环境的预测。 这项研究很重要，原因有几个。 首先，沙漠啮齿动物是研究竞争在生态系统结构和功能中的作用的模型系统。 尽管沙漠啮齿动物之间竞争的普遍影响已经建立得很好，但调解竞争的具体行为机制很少受到关注。 作为袋鼠大鼠对沙漠环境的关键行为适应，食物ho积可能与物种之间的竞争密切相关。 其次，由于理论的发展与从理论模型得出的预测的经验测试之间的富有成效的相互作用，最佳的觅食一直是行为生态学中最富有成果的研究领域之一。 作为觅食行为的一个方面，迄今为止，在食物上的工作主要是描述性的。 袋鼠大鼠对食物ho积的实验研究将通过将其放置在最佳觅食生态学的背景下，从而有助于更广泛的观点。 第三，散射的动物是许多植物种子的分散的重要药物。 这项研究导致袋鼠大鼠散射养猪场与Lard-Hoard的因素将导致对这些动物与沙漠植物种群之间的相互作用有更多的了解，从而在保护沙漠环境的情况下带来了好处。