The making of winners (and losers): how early dominance interactions determine adult social structure in a clonal fish.

ABSTRACT: Across a wide range of animal taxa, winners of previous fights are more likely to keep winning future contests, just as losers are more likely to keep losing. At present, such winner and loser effects are considered to be fairly transient. However, repeated experiences with winning and/or losing might increase the persistence of these effects, generating long-lasting consequences for social structure. To test this, we exposed genetically identical individuals of a clonal fish, the Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa), to repeated winning and/or losing dominance interactions during the first two months of their life. We subsequently investigated whether these experiences affected the fish's ability to achieve dominance in a hierarchy five months later after sexual maturity, a major life-history

SUBMITTER: Laskowski KL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4874710 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature