Hotspots and the dispersion of leks

Abstract

The settlement of promiscuous males on sites where they are most likely to encounter females was examined by computer simulation. The study extended an earlier model of Parker (1978), which dealt with male settlement on environmentally fixed mating sites, to include populations of mobile females who can mate at any point in their home ranges. Males in the simulations were expected to settle at sites with high levels of female traffic (hotspots) and to correct for the sharing of females between adjacent sites. As a results, males became clustered into fewer and more compact aggregations as female home range size was increased. Increasing female density or allowing males to settle despotically instead of in a free manner had an opposite effect. The same results were found for both bounded and unbounded surfaces, although there was increased aggregation of males at the centre of bounded surfaces as female size was increased. The model may be relevant to the diversity of male dispersions seen in lek and swarm mating animals.