Territoriality and Site‐related Dominance: On Two Related Concepts in Avian Social Organization

Abstract

AbstractTerritoriality and site‐related dominance are concepts used commonly in studies of avian social organization, but the relationship between them is rarely made explicit. One reason for this is that site‐related dominance can be studied both at the level of individual dyadic dominance relationships (DDRs) and by combining all the DDRs of a bird to calculate an index of its social status; a measure of its overall ability to dominate other members of the population. This difference is illustrated by reference to published work on the Steller jay Cyanocitta stelleri, and data from our own study of a winter population of great tits Parus major. A recent review of dominance and territoriality emphasizes that territories are just one extreme of a continuum of forms of site‐related dominance, measured as the pattern of spatial variation in social status. Ecological and behavioural correlates of different forms of site‐related dominance are therefore discussed with special reference to the non‐breeding social organization of the Paridae, to illustrate the empirical questions posed by an understanding of the various forms of site‐related dominance that may occur in different species and in different populations of the same species.