Credit: Andrew McAdam
Living beside familiar neighbours boosts a squirrel s chances of survival and successful breeding, new research shows.
The study measured year-to-year survival of North American red squirrels - and found keeping the same neighbours was so beneficial that it outweighed the negative effects of growing a year older.
However, living near genetic relatives did not improve survival rates.
The research - part of the Kluane Red Squirrel Project - used 22 years of data on squirrels in Yukon, Canada, within the traditional territory of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations. These squirrels are solitary - each defending a territory with a midden (food stash) at the centre - so we might assume they don t cooperate, said lead author Dr Erin Siracusa, of the Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour at the University of Exeter.
Credit: Erin Siracusa
Though red squirrels are a solitary and territorial species, a 22-year study of these squirrels in the Yukon suggests that they have a higher chance of survival and a greater number of offspring when living near the same neighbors year after year. Surprisingly, the findings appearing December 17 in the journal
Current Biology show that it didn t matter whether the squirrels neighbors were related to them; these fitness benefits instead depended on familiarity, or the length of time the same squirrels lived next to each other. These benefits were even more pronounced in older squirrels, whom the data suggested could sharply offset the effects of aging by maintaining all of their neighbors from one year to the next.