Morphological and behavioural correlates of contest success in male yellow-headed geckos, Gonatodes albogularis: sequential assessment or self-assessment?

Cotrina, Jorge Martínez; Bohórquez-Alonso, Martha L.; Molina‐Borja, Miguel

doi:10.1163/1568539x-00003199

Cited by 11 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Indeed, many recent studies using the framework of examining relations between contestant RHP and contest costs have produced inconclusive results in terms of support for a particular strategy (e.g. Prenter, Elwood & Taylor, 2006;Martínez-Cotrina, Bohórquez-Alonso & Molina-Borja, 2014;McGinley, Prenter & Taylor 2015). These studies use measures that indicate direct costs (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increased aggressive motivation towards formidable opponents: evidence of a novel form of mutual assessment

2019

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Contests are largely driven by resource value, but their outcome also depends on asymmetries in fighting ability between contestants. Consequently, individuals benefit from assessing these asymmetries when deciding to engage opponents or retreat. Yet, there is much about these assessments that we do not know. First, it is often difficult to discriminate if individuals only assess their own fighting ability or if they compare it to that of their opponents by mutual assessment. Second, the extent to which assessment improves over the course of a contest, as predicted by theory, has remained largely unexplored. We addressed these questions by studying assessment during territorial contests between male Siamese fighting fish, Betta splendens. Findings show the consistent use of mutual assessment when deciding to engage opponents, with a progressive increase in assessment accuracy over sequential contest phases by reducing the use of dishonest signals. Importantly, contrary to theoretical expectations, we find evidence of a novel form of mutual assessment in which fight motivation increases (rather than decreases) when contestants assess their opponents as more formidable than themselves. Although contestants shifted to opponent-only assessment when adjusting display and attack, the collective evidence shows greater aggressive intent towards more threatening opponents. We argue that explanations for this form of assessment may be provided by considering territorial dynamics related to reproductive success and parental investment.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increased aggressive motivation towards formidable opponents: evidence of a novel form of mutual assessment

2019

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“…This may account for mounting recent empirical evidence of selfassessment (e.g. Brandt & Swallow, 2009;Copeland, Levay, Sivaraman, Beebe-Fugloni, & Earley, 2011;Rudin & Briffa, 2011;Tanner & Jackson, 2011;Martinez-Cotrina, Bohorquez-Alonso, & Molina-Borja, 2014;Tsai, Barrows, & Weiss, 2014).…”

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confidence: 98%

Aggressiveness as a component of fighting ability in pigs using a game-theoretical framework

et al. 2015

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“…see Appendix VIII for the details. The payoffs (34) are different from the payoffs W (16) because condition (24) does not hold. This result is unique -only an equalizer strategy can marginalize interactions of a strategy with its mutants and there is single equalizer strategy with payoffs (34) that predicts outcome probabilities without mutual cooperation Ω CC = 0.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is empirical evidence that some species implement self-assessment: they use only information regarding their own state, rather than the state of the competitor, to decide whether to flee or keep fighting for a territory or mating opportunity [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. There is evidence for the existence of a significant variety of assessment techniques in animal contests [6,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42], for a review, see [3][4][5].…”

Section: M1mentioning

confidence: 99%

Single equalizer strategy with no information transfer for conflict escalation

Engel

Feigel

2018

Phys. Rev. E

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In an iterated two-person game, for instance prisoner's dilemma or the snowdrift game, there exist strategies that force the payoffs of the opponents to be equal. These equalizer strategies form a subset of the more general zero-determinant strategies that unilaterally set the payoff of an opponent. A challenge in the attempts to understand the role of these strategies in the evolution of animal behavior is the lack of iterations in the fights for mating opportunities or territory control. We show that an arbitrary two-parameter strategy may possess a corresponding equalizer strategy which produces the same result: statistics of the fight outcomes in the contests with competitors are the same for each of these two strategies. Therefore, analyzing only the equalizer strategy space may be sufficient to predict animal behavior if nature, indeed, reduces (marginalizes) complex strategies to equalizer strategy space. The work's main finding is that there is a unique equalizer strategy that predicts fight outcomes without symmetric cooperation responses. The lack of symmetric cooperation responses is a common trait in conflict escalation contests that generally require a clear winner. In addition, this unique strategy does not assess information of the opponent's state. The method bypasses the standard analysis of evolutionary stability. The results fit well the observations of combat between male bowl and doily spiders and support an empirical assumption of the war of attrition model that the species use only information regarding their own state during conflict escalation.

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Morphological and behavioural correlates of contest success in male yellow-headed geckos, Gonatodes albogularis: sequential assessment or self-assessment?

Cited by 11 publications

References 49 publications

Increased aggressive motivation towards formidable opponents: evidence of a novel form of mutual assessment

Increased aggressive motivation towards formidable opponents: evidence of a novel form of mutual assessment

Aggressiveness as a component of fighting ability in pigs using a game-theoretical framework

Single equalizer strategy with no information transfer for conflict escalation

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