Home Ranges, Cognitive Maps, Habitat Models and Fitness Landscapes for Martes

Abstract

Martens (members of the genus Martes) maintain home ranges because the long-term benefits (food, access to mates, rest sites, information, etc.) from doing so exceed the long-term costs (travel, risk of predation, competitors, etc.). Martens appear to have cognitive maps of their home ranges, which one might envision as an integration of contour maps, perhaps one for each benefit and cost. Habitat provides and affects the benefits and costs for martens and, therefore, contributes to each marten’s fitness. By integrating how habitat characteristics contribute to a marten’s, fitness one can construct a fitness landscape, a map of how much each site on a landscape can contribute to a marten’s fitness. I propose that energy might be used as a crude index for modeling cognitive maps and fitness landscapes for fishers. That model would form a basis for testing my a priori hypothesis that fishers choose home ranges that minimize the area needed to meet their requirements, thus maximizing their fitness. Combining the concepts of fitness landscapes, habitat modeling, and a priori hypothesis testing would enhance our understanding of the interactions among a marten’s habitat, home range characteristics, and fitness.

The wild things that live on my farm are reluctant to tell me, in so many words, how much of my township is included within their daily or nightly beats. I am curious about this, for it gives me the ratio between the size of their universe and the size of mine, and it conveniently begs the much more important question, who is the more thoroughly acquainted with the world in which he lives?-Aldo Leopold (1949:78)