Flower visitor insects display an interspecific dominance hierarchy on flowers

Renaud, Thomas; Root‐Bernstein, Meredith

doi:10.1002/ecy.3958

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 11 publications

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“…Although much of this interspecific research addresses interactions on a pairwise scale, such interactions unfold within the context of an entire community of potentially interacting species 14 . Aggressive interactions between multiple species at foraging locations are common 15 , and several studies document the presence of interspecific dominance hierarchies 16 , 17 . Consequently, the mechanisms explaining the formation and maintenance of such hierarchies may indeed have important resultant effects on community assembly and other ecological processes, yet these mechanisms remain largely unknown.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unfamiliarity generates costly aggression in interspecific avian dominance hierarchies

Leighton,

Drury,

Small

et al. 2024

Nat Commun

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Dominance hierarchies often form between species, especially at common feeding locations. Yet, relative to work focused on the factors that maintain stable dominance hierarchies within species, large-scale analyses of interspecific dominance hierarchies have been comparatively rare. Given that interspecific behavioral interference mediates access to resources, these dominance hierarchies likely play an important and understudied role in community assembly and behavioral evolution. To test alternative hypotheses about the formation and maintenance of interspecific dominance hierarchies, we employ an large, participatory science generated dataset of displacements observed at feeders in North America in the non-breeding season. Consistent with the hypothesis that agonistic interference can be an adaptive response to exploitative competition, we find that species with similar niches are more likely to engage in costly aggression over resources. Among interacting species, we find broad support for the hypothesis that familiarity (measured as fine-scale habitat overlap) predicts adherence to the structure of the dominance hierarchy and reduces aggression between species. Our findings suggest that the previously documented agonistic hierarchy in North American birds emerges from species-level adaptations and learned behaviors that result in the avoidance of costly aggression.

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