Social environment shapes female settlement decisions in a solitary carnivore

How and where a female selects an area to settle and breed is of central
importance in dispersal and population ecology as it governs range
expansion and gene flow. Social structure and organization have been shown
to influence settlement decisions, but its importance in settlement of
large, solitary mammals is largely unknown. We investigate how the
identity of overlapping conspecifics on the landscape, acquired during the
maternal care period, influences selection of settlement home ranges in a
non-territorial, solitary mammal using location data of 56 female brown
bears (Ursus arctos). We used a resource selection function to determine
whether females’ settlement behavior was influenced by presence of their
mother, related females, familiar females, and female population density.
Hunting may remove mothers and result in socio-spatial changes prior to
settlement. We compared overlap between settling females and their
mother’s concurrent or most recent home ranges to examine the settling
female’s response to the absence or presence of her mother on the
landscape. We found that females selected settlement home ranges that
overlapped their mother’s home range, familiar females, i.e. those they
had previously overlapped with, and areas with higher density than their
natal ranges. However, they did not select areas overlapping related
females. We also found that when mothers were removed from the landscape,
female offspring selected settlement home ranges with greater overlap of
their mother’s range, compared with mothers who were alive. Our results
suggest that females are acquiring and using information about their
social environment when making settlement decisions