Data from: Spatial overlap in a solitary carnivore: support for the land-tenure, kinship, or resource dispersion hypotheses?

1. There are several alternative hypotheses about the effects of territoriality, kinship, and prey availability on individual carnivore distributions within populations. The first is the land-tenure hypothesis, which predicts that carnivores regulate their density through territoriality and temporal avoidance. The second is the kinship hypothesis, which predicts related individuals will be clumped within populations, and the third is the resource dispersion hypothesis, which suggests that resource richness may explain variable sociality, spatial overlap, or temporary aggregations of conspecifics. 2. Research on the socio-spatial organization of animals is essential in understanding territoriality, intra- and inter-specific competition, and contact rates that influence diverse ecology, including disease transmission between conspecifics and courtship behaviors. 3. We explored these hypotheses with data collected on a solitary carnivore, the cougar (Puma concolor), from 2005 to 2012 in the Southern Yellowstone Ecosystem, Wyoming, USA. We employed 27 annual home ranges for 13 cougars to test whether home range overlap was better explained by land-tenure, kinship, resource dispersion, or some combination of the three. 4. We found support for both the land-tenure and resource dispersion hypotheses, but not for kinship. Cougar sex was the primary driver explaining variation in home range overlap. Males overlapped significantly with females, whereas the remaining dyads (F-F, M-M) overlapped significantly less. In support for the resource dispersion hypothesis, hunting opportunity (the probability of a cougar killing prey in a given location) was often higher in overlapping than in non-overlapping portions of cougar home ranges. In particular, winter hunt opportunity rather than summer hunt opportunity was higher in overlapping portions of female-female and male-female home ranges. 5. Our results may indicate that solitary carnivores are more tolerant of sharing key resources with unrelated conspecifics than previously believed, or at least during periods of high resource availability. Further, our results suggest that the resource dispersion hypothesis, which is typically applied to social species, is applicable in describing the spatial organization of solitary carnivores.1. 关于领域性、亲缘关系与猎物可获得性对种群内食肉动物个体分布的影响，目前存在数种备选假说。第一种为领地占有假说（land-tenure hypothesis），该假说预测食肉动物可通过领域性与时间规避调节种群密度；第二种为亲缘关系假说，该假说预测亲缘个体将在种群内呈聚集分布；第三种为资源弥散假说（resource dispersion hypothesis），该假说指出资源丰富度可解释同种个体间可变的社会性、空间重叠或临时聚集现象。 2. 研究动物的社会空间组织，对于理解领域性、种内与种间竞争以及影响多种生态过程的接触率至关重要，这些生态过程包括同种个体间的疾病传播与求偶行为。 3. 本研究以美国怀俄明州南黄石生态系统2005至2012年间收集的独居食肉动物美洲狮（Puma concolor）数据为基础，对上述三项假说进行了验证。研究共纳入13只美洲狮的27个年度家域数据，以检验家域重叠现象更符合领地占有假说、亲缘关系假说、资源弥散假说，抑或是三者的组合。 4. 本研究结果支持领地占有假说与资源弥散假说，但不支持亲缘关系假说。美洲狮的性别是解释家域重叠变异的核心驱动因素：雄性与雌性家域存在显著重叠，而其余配对组（雌-雌配对、雄-雄配对）的家域重叠程度则显著更低。就资源弥散假说而言，捕猎机会（即美洲狮在特定位置成功猎杀猎物的概率）在美洲狮家域的重叠区域往往高于非重叠区域。具体而言，在雌-雌配对与雄-雌配对的家域重叠区域内，冬季捕猎机会显著高于夏季捕猎机会。 5. 本研究结果表明，独居食肉动物对与无亲缘关系的同种个体共享关键资源的容忍度或高于此前认知，至少在资源可获得性较高的时期是如此。此外，本研究结果提示，通常应用于社会性物种的资源弥散假说，同样可用于描述独居食肉动物的空间组织模式。