University of Groningen
Why do animals have territories?
Hinsch, Martin
IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to
cite from it. Please check the document version below.
Document Version
Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record
Publication date:
2017
Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database
Citation for published version (APA):
Hinsch, M. (2017). Why do animals have territories? [Groningen]: University of Groningen
Copyright
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the
author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons).
Take-down policy
If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately
and investigate your claim.
Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the
number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum.
Download date: 15-06-2017
Propositions relating to the PhD dissertation
Why do animals have territories?
Martin Hinsch
1. The evolution of defence of space does not require heterogeneous space
and only the barest minimum of spatial cognition.
(this thesis, chapters 3 & 4; Morrell & Kokko, 2005)
2. The selection pressure for poaching by territorial neighbours and against
territory defence is strong and robust enough to make the existence of territories difficult to explain.
(this thesis, chapter 5; Dally et al. 2006)
3. Ineffective defence is an instance of punishment. Together with credible
threats it is a lot more effective, however, in maintaining respect for property
than effective defence without threats.
(this thesis, chapter 6; Switzer et al. 2001)
4. The evolutionary stability of territory ownership, territory borders and monopolization of resources within territories has been analysed before but rarely
from first principles and never within the same model. Strictly speaking
there are therefore no models that show why territoriality is evolutionarily
stable.
(this thesis, chapter 2)
5. There are no models that show how territoriality can evolve from a nonterritorial population.
(this thesis, chapter 2)
6. Within the same general scenario what exactly we assume that participants
in a conflict know and are able to do at each point in time is crucial for how
we think they should behave.
(this thesis, chapters 3, 4 & 6; McNamara 2006; Dubois & Giraldeau 2007)
7. It seems that making a game-theoretical model of animal conflict more realistic usually changes its behaviour. This poses a serious challenge to the legitimacy of theoretical behavioural ecology.
(this thesis, chapters 2, 3, 4 & 6)
8. Modelling means deriving the implications of a set of assumptions (numerically or mathematically) and results in a number of logical statements of
the form ’if A then B’. Whether a model is good or bad depends on what we
do with these statements.
(Hinsch & Assman, 2002)
9. Understanding the answer a model provides is often much easier than finding the question it answers.
(personal observation; Adams, 1979)