Intra-specific variation and taxa- sampling affects the home range — body mass relationship

The relationship between home range size and body mass is a frequently studied allometric relationship. However, the results of various studies differ greatly, leading to much debate about the nature of the relationship. We argue that this confusion is not surprising, due to intra-specific variation in home range size caused by ecological variability rather than by body mass. By random resampling of different studies from within 16 Carnivora species, we show that the scaling exponent ranged from 0.30–1.54 depending on the particular studies included for each species. Of these exponents, 10% did not contain 0.75 within their confidence limits, and 5.5% did not contain 1.00. Furthermore, by randomly sub-sampling 16 species from a total sample of 58 species, we found that the scaling exponent varied between 0.18 and 2.76. Of these exponents, 42.2% did not contain 0.75 within their confidence limits, whereas 16.8% did not contain 1.00. Therefore, we strongly recommend that greater consideration be paid to intra-specific ecological variability and taxa selection when dealing with both allometry and cross-species life history studies.