There have been several studies (e.g., Jezdrejewski, W. et al., 2001; Gurarie, E. et al., 2022) discussing movement patterns in wolves also from the perspective of territory patrolling.
While active area of use tends to diminish during the denning and pup raising period (spring, summer), the autumn and winter is a time when wolves cover an extensive range.
Regardless of the season, boundaries must be maintained but the maintenance (scent-marking, patrolling) is complicated by the necessity to keep close to the pups during summer as well as the vast territorial ranging during winter.
Accordingly, wolves should renew the scent-marks before their effects fade as well as inspect for possible trespassers but this should be managed while centering around pups or while using locations on pack’s territory during winter that might lie very far from the more distant boundary.
It has been found that wolves appear to apply a routine to their territorial patrolling (this routine might be partly related to prey distribution and prey vigilance factors).
The wolves seem to use sectors of their range sequentially returning to the same sector (and maintaining its respective border) approximately every 6 days (a rotational pattern).
(This average of 6 days was first estimated in Poland where average wolf territory size is about 200 – 400 km2 and in the particular region, prey abundance is very high.)
If wolf packs, indeed, adopt routines in territorial patrolling (rotational visitations), it might be interesting to learn whether wolf packs adjusted their return rates to the same boundary with respect of the ‘routine’ observed by their neighbours.
So, for example, if a wolf pack perhaps tends to revisit scent-marking locations in a specific sector along their territorial boundary every 6 – 8 days (and moreover, if they follow, for example, a clockwise or counterclockwise pattern), these movements and visitations should be rather predictable.
The regularity of movement and the high risk of encounter with neighbouring pack might provide inherent motivation by wolf packs to gain awareness of their neighbours routines in order to avoid conflict or to exploit the absence of neighbours on a particular boundary at a particular time.
It would be curious to know if wolf packs adapt their own territorial patrolling routines to the routines of competitors (neighbours).
That is to say, it would be interesting to learn if wolves determine the patrolling routines by their neighbours (which can be achieved through reading the scent-marks and assessing how ‘faded’ they are or through listening to the howls and developing a ‘sense of regularity’ regarding when and where the neighbour howls can be heard as well as when and where their scent-marks are the freshest) and if wolves adjusted their own movements with respect to the movements by neighbours.
This could be done to avoid contact (for example, if neighbours returned to a particular sector between territories every 6th day and their return coincided to happen, e.g., on Jan 2, Jan 8, Jan 14 etc., the focal pack might instead return to mark the same sector with a lag so that they returned on, for example, Jan 5, Jan 11, Jan 17 etc.; it would be also interesting to see which pack adapted and which set the ‘clock’ on occasion one pack’s routine changes).
Thus, the chance of meeting the neighbours on the particular boundary at the given time would be reduced (if the boundary was visited approximately during the middle part of neighbour patrolling rotation interval) but the boundaries would be maintained.
On the other hand, wolves might keep track of the neighbouring routines in order to trespass.
For example, if they had grasped that the neighbours also renewed their scent marks at certain intervals, they might use the days of lowest possibilities of encounter in order to trespass on their neighbours’ territory.
Perhaps such ‘track-keeping’ would not be related to an understanding of the routine concept but simply to the strength of scent-mark and the response it evokes physiologically.
If the response becomes regular in its intensity (always low during certain intervals or always strong during certain intervals) and if the neighbouring packs manage to persist in the area for long enough to develop such apprehensions, an innate ‘hunch’ might arise regarding the neighbours’ activity.
Wolves might learn that there are degrees of intensity to the scent-mark that correspond to degrees of encounter probability.
Thus, the routines themselves might not be adapted but trespassing might still be likelier to occur around the middle part of the neighbours’ routine interval.
This, of course, is only possible in stable populations where wolves and wolf packs are long-lived enough and where territories do not change dramatically in their size and shape over years.
If this were true, stable populations might be better capable of reducing the risk of intraspecific strife which can be a leading factor of mortality in wild wolf populations (compared to growing or disrupted populations where the change in residency, pack turnover and territory size is too dynamic for adaptations to become formed).
Another aspect of curiosity might be that of synchronized patrolling routines that result from adjustments to neighbours’ rotational visitations.
It would be difficult to achieve a patrolling routine which is synchronized with neighbours in populations where every pack has several neighbours but, on some level, synchronization might occur.
If such adaptations exist, the resulting routines would create a very interesting pattern where routines by separate wolf packs would be synchronized on a subpopulation level (one pack adapts to another and the third pack adapts to the second pack etc. until all neighbours are more or less involved).
It would be also curious to learn whether some packs are dominant in ‘setting the trend’ and this could be discerned through analyzing rotational use of territory from perspective of prey vs. patrolling.
Perhaps ‘weaker’ packs that have a greater need to adapt to ‘stronger’ neighbours exhibit a higher rotational pattern in territorial patrolling movements (but adjustments to prey are negligible) while ‘stronger’ neighbours mainly use their territory in accordance with prey distribution and vulnerability not bothering themselves overly with adjusting to neighbouring territory patrolling routines.
These ‘strong’ neighbours would then set the rules for other packs in the use of territory.
Alternatively, it might not be prey vs. patrolling patterns that determine the dominant pack but rather a mosaic of packs might emerge where several packs appear to adjust to one pack but not to others.
That is to say, the subpopulation does not have a synchronized patrolling pattern but only some packs synchronize the use of their territories with respect to only some neighbours but not to other neighbours.
I thought it would be interesting to study these aspects of wolf movement and use of territory.
Notes by Ieva 