Research overview: floaters and territory vacancies in tiger populations

Not every adult tiger holds a territory; some live as floaters, occupying the gaps between residents and waiting for a vacancy. This overview synthesizes research on how these non-territorial individuals persist at the margins, how the death or displacement of a resident creates an opening that floaters and dispersers compete to fill, and how the turnover of territory holders structures a population. It reviews how vacancies, prey availability, and the supply of dispersers interact to govern recruitment into the breeding population. The synthesis frames the territorial mosaic as a dynamic system of occupancy and replacement rather than a fixed map. For enthusiasts it explains why removing a single tiger can set off a cascade of movement as neighbors and floaters reshuffle, and why the breeding population is only part of the total number of tigers using a landscape.