Does the Jarman–Bell principle at intra-specific level explain sexual segregation in polygynous ungulates?
Abstract The Jarman–Bell principle states that large-bodied mammalian herbivores can subsist on lower quality diets because of their lower metabolism requirement/gut capacity ratio. Two major hypotheses for sexual segregation (the behaviour in which animals of the same species aggregate by sex) base their foundations on extending this principle to the intraspecific level, despite the lack of experimental evidence to support this. The first proposes that the larger males can process fibre (low-quality diet) more efficiently than the smaller females, leading to sexual segregation by habitat partitioning due to selection of different food quality and/or quantity (sexual dimorphism–body size hypothesis). The second suggests that the longer time and extra rumination required to digest low-quality food will cause asynchrony of behaviour between males and females, which then leads to sexual segregation (activity budget hypothesis). To provide experimental evidence for the Jarman–Bell principl
