“Dominant individuals (defined as reproducing males and females) occupy the centre of roosts and subdominant individuals (defined as non-reproducing males and females) the outer area”
Prior studies reported inconsistent spatial patterns in flying-fox occupation (Table 2). From our new dataset, we observed that the proportion of males per tree increased with distance from the roost centre (0.15 ± 0.039, p<0.001), though this effect was relatively small and variable across roosts and species (Figure 8). If we assume that only dominant males share their territory with females and their young (Markus 2002; Welbergen 2005), a lower proportion of males in trees closer to the centre of roosts may indicate that dominant individuals occupy the centre of some roosts and subdominant individuals the outer area. The small effect sizes observed would suggest that there is no clear spatial structure to reproductive groupings or dominance groupings. This can be seen also in maps showing male composition by tree relative to the roost perimeter, given in Appendix S4 in the Supporting Information.