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Article: Food hoarding by Merriam's kangaroo rats: a test of alternative hypotheses.
- Article from:
- Ecology
- Article date:
- December 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Ecological Society of America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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INTRODUCTION
Food storage is an important adaptation of many animals to temporally variable or unpredictable food supplies (Smith and Reichman 1984, Vander Wall 1990). Vander Wall (1990) thoroughly reviewed the abundant descriptive literature on food hoarding. Despite this rich natural history of hoarding, only a few workers have tested specific hypotheses about the adaptive value of various spatial and temporal patterns of food storage (e.g., Stapanian and Smith 1978, Clarkson et al. 1986, Reichman et al. 1986, Hurly and Robertson 1987, McNamara et al. 1990, Lucas and Walter 1991, Waite and Reeve 1992, 1993, Clarke and Kramer 1994a).
Two major patterns of ...