Truncated power-law distribution of group sizes in antelope

Abstract

Abstract Quantifying and understanding group size distributions can be useful for understanding group behaviour in animal populations. We analysed group size data of the blackbuck, Antilope cervicapra, from six different field sites to estimate the group size distribution of this antelope. We used likelihood based methods (AICs and likelihood ratios) to show that an exponentially truncated power law is the distribution that best describes blackbuck group data, outperforming a simple power-law, an exponential distribution, and a lognormal distribution. Our results show that distribution parameters can be used to draw novel insights regarding group dynamics, and we demonstrate this by investigating how habitat openness affects group size distributions.