Social rank modulates how environmental quality influences cooperation and conflict within animal societies.

ABSTRACT: Although dominance hierarchies occur in most societies, our understanding of how these power structures influence individual investment in cooperative and competitive behaviours remains elusive. Both conflict and cooperation in animal societies are often environmentally regulated, yet how individuals alter their cooperative and competitive investments as environmental quality changes remain unclear. Using game theoretic modelling, we predict that individuals of all ranks will invest more in cooperation and less in social conflict in harsh environments than individuals of the same ranks in benign environments. Counterintuitively, low-ranking subordinates should increase their investment in cooperation proportionally more than high-ranking dominants, suggesting that subordinates contribute r

SUBMITTER: Liu M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7542804 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature