Aggression heuristics underlie animal dominance hierarchies and provide evidence of group-level social information.

ABSTRACT: Members of a social species need to make appropriate decisions about who, how, and when to interact with others in their group. However, it has been difficult for researchers to detect the inputs to these decisions and, in particular, how much information individuals actually have about their social context. We present a method that can serve as a social assay to quantify how patterns of aggression depend upon information about the ranks of individuals within social dominance hierarchies. Applied to existing data on aggression in 172 social groups across 85 species in 23 orders, it reveals three main patterns of rank-dependent social dominance: the downward heuristic (aggress uniformly against lower-ranked opponents), close competitors (aggress against opponents ranked slightly below self)

SUBMITTER: Hobson EA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7958391 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature