Territory red squirrels live longer when they are friendly with their neighbors

Although red squirrels are a soluent and territorial species, a 22-year study of red squirrels in the Yukon region of Canada shows that red squirrels living near the same neighborhood year after year have a higher chance of survival and more offspring. Surprisingly, the findings, published December 18 in the journal Current Biology, published in Cell Press Cell Press, suggest that it doesn't matter whether the red squirrel's neighbors are related to them, but that these environmental adaptation benefits depend on familiarity, that is, how long they live with their neighbors. These benefits are more pronounced in older squirrels, and the data suggest that older squirrels can greatly offset the effects of aging by maintaining a neighborhood each year.
Red Squirrels live in their respective territories and have little physical contact with each other, but given the value of being familiar with their neighbors, our study raises interesting possibilities: they may work with competitors. Lead author Erin Siracusa, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Exeter in the UK, said. Siracusa led the study as a doctoral student at the University of Guelve in Canada. "We don't know what this cooperation looks like, whether it's sharing food resources, or actively alerting neighbors to predators, or perhaps even forming coalitions to protect adjacent territories from usurpation." But I think based on our findings, red squirrels do participate in social interactions and have important social relationships, despite their isolation.
it is well known that social relationships play a key role in group animals, while Siracusa is interested in how social relationships affect so-called territorially conscious species, which rarely interact physically with their peers. Through the Clune Red Squirrel Project, Siracusa followed 1,009 red squirrels for 22 years with colleagues from the University of Guelff (Andrew G. McAdam), the University of Alberta (Stan Boutin), the University of Saskatchewan (Jeffrey E. Lane) and the University of Michigan (Ben Dantzer). Every summer, each squirrel is colored with a colored ear mark so that researchers can record who lives where and who shares territorial boundaries.
researchers have previously observed that red squirrels with stable social relationships , which are partly identified by a defensive "sound" , are less likely to invade each other's territory and steal each other's food. "Once they've lived together long enough to reach an agreement on these territorial boundaries, they're like a gentleman's agreement, 'Well, we've established these territorial boundaries. We know where they are. We won't waste any more time and energy on these boundaries. Siracusa said. This weakening of aggressiveness among familiar neighbors, known as the "dear enemy", has previously been proven in many species, but researchers have not easily linked it to adaptive advantages.
in this project, Siracusa and the team began to study whether there was any change in the survival and reproduction of squirrels who lived near blood relatives, or for years near non-blood relatives. They found that close relatives did not bring any biological benefits -- surprising because animals with the same genes are often more likely to show alism to each other. But the researchers did find that the longer squirrel neighbors lived with each other, the more likely they were to live into the next year and produce more offspring, regardless of kinship.
for older squirrels, the benefits of this familiarity are even more pronounced. "The benefits of familiarity are enough to completely offset the negative effects of aging." "For example, for a 4-year-old red squirrel, their chances of survival dropped from 68 percent to 59 percent over a year," Siracusa said. But if the squirrel could hold all its neighbors, the probability of survival would actually increase from 68 percent to 74 percent. However, she points out that only a small percentage of squirrels keep in touch with their neighbors, so not all squirrels experience the benefits of being familiar with their neighbors in old age.
To ensure that their findings reflect the effects of familiarity among neighbors, rather than because of particularly good habitats or low-risk local areas, Siracusa and the team tested spatial correlations for survival and reproductive success and found that such correlations were rare and inconsistent.
more broadly, she believes the findings may help us better understand the evolution of territorial systems. This may help explain territorial behaviour, such as migratory species returning to the same place year after year, species maintaining relatively stable territory or range of activity through their lifetimes, or that animal mothers rarely give up their territory for their children - all of which may be related to animals not wanting to renegotiate social relations. "In order to establish a territorial system, the benefits of owning the territory must outweigh the cost of protecting those resources, so we should see the evolution of a mechanism that minimizes the cost of the territory," Siracusa said. "
to write oil poems for squirrels, I think red squirrels can teach us the value of social relationships." Red squirrels don't like their neighbors. They constantly compete with their neighbors for food, mates and resources. However, in order to survive, they must live in harmony. In today's world, we see a lot of conflict and division, but perhaps this is a lesson worth remembering: red squirrels need neighbors, and maybe we need them. (Source: Science.com Tang One Dust)
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