Abstract
Photographs by Peter Waser A tagged adult male banner-tailed kangaroo rat (Dipodomys spectabilis) is at the entrance to his mound during the summer monsoon season, 2007, a time of unusually profuse grass growth. The banner-tailed kangaroo rat (Dipodomys spectabilis) builds conspicuous earth mounds, in which they live and larder-hoard, and which they often pass from one generation to the next. Their absolute dependence on these mounds makes it possible to tag most juveniles on or near their mother's mound and to track their residency patterns throughout their lives. In this way, the effects of dispersal on fitness, population dynamics, and genetic population structure can be studied. The mound and part of the surrounding runway system belonging to an individual banner-tailed kangaroo rat in the study population, as well as the grassland habitat preferred by this species. The view is looking south toward Mexico from the Rucker study site on the Krentz Ranch in southeast Arizona. These photographs illustrate the article “Fitness consequences of dispersal: Is leaving home the best of a bad lot?” by P. M. Waser, K. M. Nichols, and J. D. Hadfield, tentatively scheduled to appear in Ecology 94(6), June 2013.
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