© 1987 by The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
Behavioral Aspects of Rodent Population Biology1
Biology Department, Williams College Williamstown, Massachusetts 01267
Five approaches to the study of behavior as a factor in the population biology of rodents are outlined. These approaches are: (1) genetics, (2) physiology, (3) chronobiology,(4) behavioral ecology and sociobiology, and (5) the use of intra- and inter-specific comparisons. For each approach selected examples from the recent literature, from this symposium and from my own work are used to illustrate the new directions that are emerging for analyzing behavior as a factor affecting natality, mortality and emigration/immigration in rodents. Areas where additional investigations are needed are noted including some questions to be tested by future experiments. A variety of new techniques that have been developed or are innovative applications of existing techniques are incorporated into the examples. Most of the material presented concerns four genera of rodents, Microtus, Mus, Peromyscus, and Rattus. The following major conclusions emerge from an overview of these approaches: Most recent research on behavior as a factor in rodent population biology has been concerned primarily with natality. Few investigators have dealt with mortality and only a limited number have explored emigration/immigration. Field and laboratory studies on behavioral aspects of rodent population biology have become more integrated than they were several decades ago. Both proximate and ultimate questions about behavior and population dynamics are now being tested by both laboratory and field methods. In contrast to some earlier approaches that often viewed population control as involving a single factor, most emerging conceptual frameworks have, as a major assumption, that population regulation is a multi-factorial process including many behavioral components.