摘要
Individuals may reduce competition by temporally partitioning their use of a shared resource. Behavioral differences between sexes in ungulates may encourage segregation as individuals attempt to avoid antagonistic interactions. However, dominant sex and age groups may reduce subordinates' access to food resources, regardless of the subordinate's sex. We hypothesized that white-tailed deer Odocoileus Virginian us temporally segregated at supplemental feedi ng sites based on social rank (subordinate: yearling males and adult females;dominant: adult males) and that segregation was affected by phase of the breeding season and diel cycle. If deer temporally segregate according to social rank, we predicted that the resulting activity patterns would manifest in one social class being relatively more susceptible to hunter-induced mortality. We used a multistate modeling approach to quantify temporal segregation and calculated the probability that a feeding site was in a particular state during diurnal and nocturnal hours for each of the 3 phases of the breeding season. We determined that transition probabilities differed by season and diel cycle and dominant and subordinate social classes clearly avoided each other, with <1% co-occurrenee at feedi ng sites. During the pre-breedi ng seas on, the probability of a subordi nate being present during diurnal hours was 3.Ox more likely than a dominant being present, but did not differ during nocturnal hours. There was no difference for dominants and subordinates during diurnal or no cturnal hours during the breedi ng season .In the post-breedi ng season, subordi nates were 1.7x more likely to occur at the feeding site than a dominant during diurnal hours but they did not differ during nocturnal hours. Our results indicate that dominance status influences temporal segregation at feeding sites and is affected by the phase of the breeding season. Therefore, the resulti ng activity patterns may in crease subordi nates' risk to human predation during the prebreedi ng and post-breeding seasons.
