The effect of familiarity with a neighborhood on territory acquisition

Summary

Several authors have suggested that familiarity with the neighborhood around a territory might improve the ability of contestants to compete successfully for that territory. In this study, juvenile Anolis aeneus lizards residing in clearings were allowed to observe, but not enter, artificial homesites for 9 to 12 days. Then the homesites were made accessible to both previous residents and new arrivals to the clearing.

The settlement success of new arrivals onto the homesites was dramatically lower than that of comparably-sized previous residents. For both new arrivals and previous residents, the period from first entry to first received attack was an excellent predictor of settlement success, but whereas most previous residents spent many hours on the homesites prior to being attacked by other juveniles, almost all new arrivals were, attacked soon after entering the homesites. Many new arrivals made tactical errors (e.g. joined larger lizards already on the homesites, and then were promptly chased), whereas previous residents almost never joined lizards larger than themselves. In addition, new arrivals which were alone on the homesites were more quickly attacked by neighboring individuals than were previous residents under comparable circumstances. These results suggest that information about a territorial habitat and its inhabitants is an important determinant of territory acquisition success in this species.