Meeting Abstract
P3.13 Wednesday, Jan. 6 Spatial arrangements of thermal habitat mediate competition for space SEARS, MW; Bryn Mawr College msears@brynmawr.edu
When facing tradeoffs between thermoregulation and food acquisition, theory predicts that individuals should thermoregulate more carefully under high productivity. Often, though, individuals make thermoregulatory decisions in the presence of others. In these cases, the potential for exploitative competition exists and individuals should thermoregulate less carefully. Contrarily, if competition is through interference, theory suggests that individuals might benefit from more careful thermoregulation. Here, I explored these predictions more thoroughly in a spatial context where I distributed thermal resources in various arrangements. In a set of simulations, I allowed two differently sized lizards to thermoregulate, both alone and together, amongst several thermally structured environments. I assigned specific rules to individuals to search amongst patches for environmental temperatures that would provide maximal energy assimilation. Additionally, I assigned further rules of engagement to individuals such that larger individuals were more likely to win encounters with smaller individuals and retain their positions. All habitat was configured such that 25% of the available patches contained temperatures within the preferred range of body temperatures. I assigned temperatures which were outside of this range to the remaining habitat patches. When thermoregulating together In a configuration where all favorable patches were clumped, larger individuals thermoregulated more accurately while incurring lower energetic costs than did smaller individuals. In contrast, these individuals exhibited comparable performance when thermoregulating alone. In habitat configurations with evenly distributed favorable patches, differences in thermoregulatory performance disappeared. This result occurred because individuals partitioned space in a manner which minimized contact with one another, thereby reducing the potential for interference competition.
