Reproductive skew, fighting costs and winner-loser effects in social dominance evolution.

ABSTRACT: Social hierarchies are often found in group-living animals and can be formed through pairwise aggressive interactions. The dominance rank can influence reproductive success (RS) with a skew towards high-ranking individuals. Using game theory, we investigate how the opportunity for differently ranked individuals to achieve RS influences the costs of hierarchy formation and the strength of winner and loser effects. In our model, individuals adjust their aggressive and submissive behaviour towards others through reinforcement learning. The learning is based on rewards and penalties, which depend on relative fighting ability. From individual-based simulations, we determine evolutionary equilibria of traits such as learning rates. We examine situations that differ in the extent of monopolisatio

SUBMITTER: Leimar O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9315160 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature