Social Organization Of Mountain Lions: Does A Land-Tenure System Regulate Population Size?
VERNON C. BLEICH [1,2] R. TERRY BOWYER [1] Abstract. Mountain lions (Puma concolor) are thought to regulate their populations via social behavior. The proposed mechanism is a land-tenure system that results in exclusion of individuals from the population through territoriality and temporal avoidance. In the absence of mortality from intraspecific aggression, social behavior can regulate a population only by limiting reproduction. Successful reproduction among large mammals is related to the availability of food. Four states of nature must hold if a population is regulated by social behavior via a land-tenure system in mountain lions: (1) individuals should not be distributed randomly, but each should have its own distinct distribution, and those individuals should maintain regions of exclusivity; (2) use of food within the distribution of an individual should not be random, but should be clumped as individuals try to exclude each other from access to prey; (3) those clumps of prey must
