Data from: Energy and the scaling of animal space use

Daily animal movements are usually limited to a discrete home range area that scales allometrically with body size, suggesting that home-range size is shaped by metabolic rates and energy availability across species. However, there is little understanding of the relative importance of the various mechanisms proposed to influence home-range scaling (e.g., differences in realm productivity, thermoregulation, locomotion strategy, dimensionality, trophic guild, and prey size) and whether these extend beyond the commonly studied birds and mammals. We derive new home-range scaling relationships for fishes and reptiles and use a model-selection approach to evaluate the generality of home-range scaling mechanisms across 569 vertebrate species. We find no evidence that home-range allometry varies consistently between aquatic and terrestrial realms or thermoregulation strategies, but we find that locomotion strategy, foraging dimension, trophic guild, and prey size together explain 80% of the variation in home-range size across vertebrates when controlling for phylogeny and tracking method. Within carnivores, smaller relative prey size among gape-limited fishes contributes to shallower scaling relative to other predators. Our study reveals how simple morphological traits and prey-handling ability can profoundly influence individual space use, which underpins broader-scale patterns in the spatial ecology of vertebrates.动物日常活动通常被限制在一个离散的巢域（home range）范围内，该范围的大小会随体型呈现异速生长缩放规律，这表明跨物种的巢域大小由代谢速率与能量可获得性共同塑造。然而，学界对于诸多被提出的影响巢域缩放的机制（如生境域生产力差异、体温调节策略、运动方式、空间维度、营养类群以及猎物体型）的相对重要性，以及这些机制是否仅局限于已被广泛研究的鸟类与哺乳类，仍知之甚少。本研究针对鱼类与爬行类构建了全新的巢域缩放关系模型，并采用模型选择方法，对569种脊椎动物的巢域缩放机制的普适性展开评估。研究结果显示，并无证据表明巢域异速生长规律在水生与陆生境域之间，或是不同体温调节策略类群之间存在一致性差异；但在控制系统发育与追踪方法的影响后，运动方式、觅食空间维度、营养类群以及猎物体型这四项因素，可共同解释脊椎动物巢域大小80%的变异量。在食肉动物类群中，受口裂限制的鱼类其相对猎物体型更小，这使得它们的巢域缩放斜率相较于其他捕食者更为平缓。本研究揭示了简单的形态性状与猎物处理能力，可对个体空间利用方式产生深远影响，而这一机制正是支撑脊椎动物空间生态学宏观格局的核心基础。