IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/beheco/v15y2004i3p412-418.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effect of patch size and competitor number on aggression among foraging house sparrows

Author

Listed:
  • Cheryl A. Johnson
  • James W. A. Grant
  • Luc-Alain Giraldeau

Abstract

We examined the effect of patch size and competitor number on aggression among house sparrows, Passer domesticus, foraging at patches of seven different sizes in a doubling series (0.014, 0.029, 0.058, 0.116, 0.230, 0.462, and 0.922 m-super-2). Contrary to our expectations, the birds did not defend an entire patch, even when it was small as 0.014 m-super-2. The frequency of aggression among the birds decreased gradually with increasing patch size, in contrast to the step decline predicted by resource defense theory. Moreover, the birds fought more frequently and more intensely as competitor density increased. Both results are consistent with the predictions of a modified hawk-dove model for shared patches. Females were more aggressive and fed at a higher rate than did males. The proportion of females increased as patch size decreased, and aggression became more frequent and intense. Even when patches are shared, patch size has an important effect on the frequency and intensity of foraging competition and the size and composition of foraging groups. Copyright 2004.

Suggested Citation

  • Cheryl A. Johnson & James W. A. Grant & Luc-Alain Giraldeau, 2004. "The effect of patch size and competitor number on aggression among foraging house sparrows," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 15(3), pages 412-418, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:15:y:2004:i:3:p:412-418
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arh026
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Olivier Pays & Daniel Fortin & Jean Gassani & Jean Duchesne, 2012. "Group Dynamics and Landscape Features Constrain the Exploration of Herds in Fusion-Fission Societies: The Case of European Roe Deer," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(3), pages 1-8, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:15:y:2004:i:3:p:412-418. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/beheco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.