Territory size decreases minimally with increasing food abundance in stream salmonids: implications for population regulation

How the local density of territorial animals responds to changes in food abundance will depend on the flexibility of territory size. Quantitative estimates of territory size over a broad range of food abundance are relatively rare because of the difficulty of measuring food abundance in the wild.
Stream salmonids are an ideal model system for investigating flexibility in territory size, because food abundance can be quantified in the field and manipulated in the laboratory. We conducted a meta-analysis to test whether territory size decreases with increasing food abundance, and a mixed model analysis to test among three competing predictions: with increasing food abundance, territory size will be (1) fixed – the slope of a regression of log territory size vs. log food abundance = 0; (2) flexible and decreasing, as if individuals are defending a fixed amount of food – a slope = -1; and (3) initially compressible, but with an asymptotic minimum size – a slope between 0 and -1.
We collec...