Collective memory in primate conflict implied by temporal scaling collapse.

ABSTRACT: In biological systems, prolonged conflict is costly, whereas contained conflict permits strategic innovation and refinement. Causes of variation in conflict size and duration are not well understood. We use a well-studied primate society model system to study how conflicts grow. We find conflict duration is a 'first to fight' growth process that scales superlinearly, with the number of possible pairwise interactions. This is in contrast with a 'first to fail' process that characterizes peaceful durations. Rescaling conflict distributions reveals a universal curve, showing that the typical time scale of correlated interactions exceeds nearly all individual fights. This temporal correlation implies collective memory across pairwise interactions beyond those assumed in standard models of cont

SUBMITTER: Lee ED 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5635334 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature