Life-history and hormonal control of aggression in black redstarts: blocking testosterone does not decrease territorial aggression, but changes the emphasis of vocal behaviours during simulated territorial intrusions

Introduction: Many studies in behavioural endocrinology attempt to link territorial aggression with testosterone, but the exact relationship between testosterone and territorial behaviour is still unclear and may depend on the ecology of a species. The degree to which testosterone facilitates territorial behaviour is particularly little understood in species that defend territories during breeding and outside the breeding season, when plasma levels of testosterone are low. Here we suggest that species that defend territories in contexts other than reproduction may have lost the direct regulation of territorial behaviour by androgens even during the breeding season. In such species, only those components of breeding territoriality that function simultaneously as sexually selected signals may be under control of sex steroids.<p></p> Results: We investigated black redstarts (Phoenicurus ochruros), a species that shows periods of territoriality within and outside of the breeding season. We treated territorial males with an anti-androgen and an aromatase inhibitor during the breeding season to block both the direct and indirect effects of testosterone. Three and ten days after the treatment, implanted males were challenged with a simulated territorial intrusion. The treatment did not reduce the overall territorial response, but it changed the emphasis of territoriality: experimental males invested more in behaviours addressed directly towards the intruder, whereas placebo-treated males put most effort into their vocal response, a component of territoriality that may be primarily directed towards their mating partner rather than the male opponent.<p></p> Conclusions: In combination with previous findings, these data suggest that overall territoriality may be decoupled from testosterone in male black redstarts. However, high levels of testosterone during breeding may facilitate-context dependent changes in song

Fate Control and Human Rights: The Policies and Practices of Local Governance in America's Arctic

The loss of territoriality over lands conveyed under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act had adverse impacts for Alaskan tribal governance. Despite policy frameworks that emphasize the value of local governance at an international, regional, and statewide level, Alaskan tribes face unique obstacles to exercising their authority, with consequences for both human development and human rights. This Article examines how territoriality was lost and analyzes the four major effects of this loss on tribal governance. It then describes two distinct but complimentary strategies to rebuilding tribal governance authority that rely on both territorial and non-territorial authority.Ye

Territoriality and playground disturbances : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in Education

The concept of 'territoriality' has become a fairly common term within social scientific literature - and yet its application in the analysis of human behaviour appears to have been made with little reference to, or regard for, the concept's original form. The present investigation serves two purposes - first, to attempt to use the concept in the description and explanation of the etiology of social disturbances in school settings; and second, to look closely at the concept and assess its general worth in the analysis of human behaviour. Before investigating the possibility of a correlation between disturbances and the manifestation of territoriality, observations were made of the school pupil population during intervals to establish whether or not the pupils tended to occupy specific locations for protracted lengths of time - perhaps the most basic requisite of territorial behaviour. Observers gathered data in terms of the specific activities occurring and the sex and number of players. Time sampling was used, and the data confirmed that pupils do tend to return to the same geographical location to perform the same activity over a period of time. The stability of the pupil activity groups over time provided the foundation for a participant observer subsequently to investigate a second feature of territoriality - that territories are defended. The observer's task was to interview those involved in identified disturbances, and attempt to establish the etiology of the disturbance. The hypothesis was that the disturbances would be a function of the territorial behaviour of the groups. In so far as territorial behaviour can be defined in terms of Barker's (1968) 'maintenance mechanisms', the hypothesis was supported. 83% of disturbances were deemed to involve at least one feature of territoriality - be it membership, equipment, space, boundaries, or a combination of these. A further feature of the concept of 'territoriality' within animal behavioural research is that the territorial group members recognise each other on the basis of certain membership criteria. Within the pupil activity groups observed to investigate this feature among humans, membership criteria were also found to exist. These criteria were identified as being sex, class level, the amount of space available, family relationships, and physical size. On the basis of these criteria pupils were observed to be accepted or rejected from activity groups during school intervals. The findings of these initial investigations into the existence of three features of animal territoriality within human group behaviour, lend weight to an acceptance of the concept of territoriality as an adequate unit of analysis in the explanation of human group behaviour. However, throughout the investigations certain assumptions which underlie the concept tended to surface from time to time and raise doubts about the concept's applicability in human behavioural analysis. These assumptions included the idea that the territorial behaviour was manifested by members of both sexes; that territorial groups were family groups only; and that territorial behaviour was designed to repel intruders. All of these were shown in the present study to be not accurate. Added to these assumptions, the ethological literature reflects two crucial points of dissention. Ethologists, it seems, can not agree whether or not man is a territorial species. Again, among those who do accept that man is a territorial species, there is an argument over whether the territorial behaviour manifested by man is learned or instinctive. There are apparent problems in transferring a unit of analysis of animal behaviour to cover human behaviour as well. The problems are accentuated in the assumptions and debates outlined above, and compounded by the fact that within the social sciences there already exists a number of other theories and concepts which serve to explain the same human behaviour as territoriality attempts to do. While not completely rejecting the applicability of the concept of territoriality within human behavioural analysis, the conclusion arrived at was that the concept was of limited utility to the social scientist

The territoriality paradigm in cultural tourism

A typical geographers' approach to tourism is to emphasise the analysis of spatial flows and space uses and the synthesis of territorial coherence between people, place and product. The renewed interest in the territorial aspects of tourism can be seen as a response to globalisation on the one hand and the search for unique, authentic and grass-rooted experience on the other. In recent tourism studies the focus and methods shift from a description of patterns to the analysis of processes of change that are induced by tourism (touristification). Understanding the forces that are transforming cultural landscapes (urban and rural) into tourismscapes is a crucial condition for visionary planning and responsible management of regions and places. Some reflections on the future research agenda in geo-tourism will be included

The Contemporary EU's Notion of Territoriality and External Borders

The predominant spatial conception of the EU contributes to an evident emergence of a sharpened territorial building of the European space. By all evidence the idea of both the territorial cohesion and territorial continuity shows how relevant the notion of territoriality in the ‘European discourse’ is and consequently how accepted the instrument of hard and closed border and the sharp inside/outside dichotomy are. Due to this pragmatic notion of territoriality, the idea of the EU as a ‘non-Westphalian new empire’ (according to the ‘neo-medieval paradigm’) became at least unrealistic. Its borders are getting more territorial, physical and visible. Hard border policies and practices on the Eastern and Western Balkan borders mirror the existence of a de facto barrier and of a deep ‘Westphalian memory’ in the way of using the territory as support of political unity

RealTimeChess: Lessons from a Participatory Design Process for a Collaborative Multi-Touch, Multi-User Game

We report on a long-term participatory design process during which we designed and improved RealTimeChess, a collaborative but competitive game that is played using touch input by multiple people on a tabletop display. During the design process we integrated concurrent input from all players and pace control, allowing us to steer the interaction along a continuum between high-paced simultaneous and low-paced turn-based gameplay. In addition, we integrated tutorials for teaching interaction techniques, mechanisms to control territoriality, remote interaction, and alert feedback. Integrating these mechanism during the participatory design process allowed us to examine their effects in detail, revealing for instance effects of the competitive setting on the perception of awareness as well as territoriality. More generally, the resulting application provided us with a testbed to study interaction on shared tabletop surfaces and yielded insights important for other time-critical or attention-demanding applications.

Proposing a theoretical framework for local territorial identities: concepts, questions and pitfalls

When local territorial identity is understood as closely linked to sustainable, participatory and place-based development issues, it can become a dynamic, open, and plural social construction process, through which collectivities/groups choose the distinctive characteristics of the territory they inhabit, in order to develop shared views and common targets for policy implementation. In this sense, territorial identity is not to be ‘unveiled’ or ‘discovered’, but ‘built’ through a research-action focused on the opinions, attitudes, and expectations of local collectivities towards the territory they live or act in. As a research topic, local territorial identity is far from easy to deal with. Based on the key issues raised during the works of the national research group “Territorial Identities” of A.Ge.I. (Association of Italian Geographers), founded in 2008, the contribution aims at presenting some theoretical and methodological questions and pitfalls in studying territorial identities, proposing some possible answer

Territoriality, motivational climate, and idea implementation: We reap what we sow

© 2017 Scientific Journal Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved. Drawing on the integrated perspectives of territoriality and motivational climate, we explored the relationship between employees’ territoriality and idea implementation. We tested our model with 46 research and development teams in China, comprising 359 employees and their supervisors, who completed measures of territoriality, social alienation, motivational climate (specifically, performance climate and mastery climate), and idea implementation. The results showed that social alienation mediated the relationship between territoriality and idea implementation, and that mastery climate and performance climate moderated the positive relationship between territoriality and social alienation. Our findings not only provide insight into the relationship between territoriality and idea implementation, but also clarify the effect of motivational climate on this relationship. Implications for practice and future research are discussed

Territoriality among human foragers: ecological models and an application to four Bushman Groups

Journal ArticleDiscussions of human territoriality have become more sophisticated in recent years; we see fewer arguments for or against the adaptiveness of territoriality for mankind in general and more attempts to probe the ecological factors that make territoriality adaptive in particular circumstances