scholarly journals The influence of the steepness of dominance hierarchies on reciprocity and interchange in captive groups of bonobos (Pan paniscus)

Behaviour ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 142 (7) ◽  
pp. 941-960 ◽  
Author(s):  
Han de Vries ◽  
Jeroen M.G. Stevens ◽  
Linda Van Elsacker ◽  
Hilde Vervaecke
Keyword(s):  
Side Effect ◽  
Dominance Hierarchy ◽  
Pan Paniscus ◽  
Food Sharing ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Dominance Hierarchies ◽  
Market Models ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Biological Market

AbstractBiological market models explain variability in reciprocity and interchange between groups. In groups with a shallow dominance gradient, grooming will be mostly exchanged for itself (i.e. exchange will occur). In groups with steep dominance hierarchies, interchange is expected: individuals will groom higher ranking individuals to get access to limited resources or commodities such as support in conflicts, and grooming will be traded for these commodities.We examine patterns of reciprocity in grooming and support, and of interchange of grooming for support or for tolerance in six captive groups of bonobos. We test whether differences between groups in patterns of reciprocity and interchange can be attributed to differences in a measure of steepness of dominance hierarchies, which is based on dyadic agonistic interactions.We found that grooming was reciprocal in some, but not all groups. Support was highly reciprocal, but this was a side effect of dominance in most groups. Interchange between grooming and support was observed in some groups. Corroborating earlier findings, this was a side effect of individuals preferring high ranking individuals as grooming and support partners, possibly because these high-ranking individuals provide more efficient support in conflicts. There was no evidence for interchange of grooming for tolerance.Variability in grooming reciprocity was explained by differences in steepness of dominance hierarchies, as predicted by the biological market models. In groups with a shallow dominance hierarchy, grooming was more reciprocal. This was not true for reciprocity in support. There was some evidence that individuals groomed dominants more frequently in groups with a steep dominance hierarchy. The variation in interchange relations between grooming and support did not depend on the steepness of dominance hierarchies. We suggest that grooming in itself is a valuable commodity in bonobos, especially under captive conditions, which can be exchanged reciprocally. Bonobos may interchange grooming for another value equivalent, with food sharing as a very likely candidate. This interchange effects seem more dependent on potential to monopolise food than on steepness of dominance hierarchies per se.

The establishment and maintenance of dominance hierarchies

2022 ◽  
Vol 377 (1845) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Tibbetts ◽  
Juanita Pardo-Sanchez ◽  
Chloe Weise
Keyword(s):  
Dominance Hierarchy ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Dominance Rank ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Dominance Hierarchies ◽  
Dominance Relationships ◽  
Hierarchy Formation ◽  
Behavioural Dynamics ◽  
Self Organizing

Animal groups are often organized hierarchically, with dominant individuals gaining priority access to resources and reproduction over subordinate individuals. Initial dominance hierarchy formation may be influenced by multiple interacting factors, including an animal's individual attributes, conventions and self-organizing social dynamics. After establishment, hierarchies are typically maintained over the long-term because individuals save time, energy and reduce the risk of injury by recognizing and abiding by established dominance relationships. A separate set of behaviours are used to maintain dominance relationships within groups, including behaviours that stabilize ranks (punishment, threats, behavioural asymmetry), as well as signals that provide information about dominance rank (individual identity signals, signals of dominance). In this review, we describe the behaviours used to establish and maintain dominance hierarchies across different taxa and types of societies. We also review opportunities for future research including: testing how self-organizing behavioural dynamics interact with other factors to mediate dominance hierarchy formation, measuring the long-term stability of social hierarchies and the factors that disrupt hierarchy stability, incorporating phenotypic plasticity into our understanding of the behavioural dynamics of hierarchies and considering how cognition coevolves with the behaviours used to establish and maintain hierarchies. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.

scholarly journals Artificial mass loading disrupts stable social order in pigeon dominance hierarchies

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. 20200468
Author(s):  
Steven J. Portugal ◽  
James R. Usherwood ◽  
Craig R. White ◽  
Daniel W. E. Sankey ◽  
Alan M. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Body Mass ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Dominance Hierarchy ◽  
Mass Loading ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Dominance Hierarchies ◽  
Closed Population ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Linear Dominance Hierarchy ◽  
Over Time

Dominance hierarchies confer benefits to group members by decreasing the incidences of physical conflict, but may result in certain lower ranked individuals consistently missing out on access to resources. Here, we report a linear dominance hierarchy remaining stable over time in a closed population of birds. We show that this stability can be disrupted, however, by the artificial mass loading of birds that typically comprise the bottom 50% of the hierarchy. Mass loading causes these low-ranked birds to immediately become more aggressive and rise-up the dominance hierarchy; however, this effect was only evident in males and was absent in females. Removal of the artificial mass causes the hierarchy to return to its previous structure. This interruption of a stable hierarchy implies a strong direct link between body mass and social behaviour and suggests that an individual's personality can be altered by the artificial manipulation of body mass.

Dominance Hierarchies in Psychotherapy Groups

1986 ◽  
Vol 148 (6) ◽  
pp. 625-631 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Kennedy ◽  
K. Roy MacKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Dominance Hierarchy ◽  
Survival Strategies ◽  
Recent Theory ◽  
Human Group ◽  
Dominance Hierarchies ◽  
Diagnostic Categories ◽  
Group Behaviour ◽  
Adaptive Processes ◽  
Psychotherapy Groups ◽  
Biochemical Mechanisms

For a social group to develop, two opposing adaptive processes must be reconciled—mechanisms for developing cohesion and mechanisms for establishing a dominance hierarchy. The formation of stable groups provides significant evolutionary advantages: a source of protection, increased reproductive opportunities, and a larger store of survival strategies than any one individual could encompass. A recent theory of human evolution (Reynolds, 1981) stresses that social behaviour would seem to be the most likely single cause of the origin of human intelligence, if one origin must be isolated. Current interest in the biological basis of behaviour has been focused particularly on specific diagnostic categories and biochemical mechanisms. This paper reviews a different research tradition, based on ethological principles, and applies the findings to an understanding of human group behaviour.

scholarly journals The Dominance Hierarchy of Wood-Eating Termites from China

Insects ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore A. Evans ◽  
Boris Dodji Kasseney
Keyword(s):  
Dominance Hierarchy ◽  
Coptotermes Formosanus ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Pest Species ◽  
Dominance Hierarchies ◽  
Competitive Release ◽  
Fundamental Process ◽  
Filter Papers ◽  
Increased Activity ◽  
Temporal Overlap

Competition is a fundamental process in ecology and helps to determine dominance hierarchies. Competition and dominance hierarchies have been little investigated in wood-eating termites, despite the necessary traits of similar resources, and showing spatial and temporal overlap. Competition and dominance between five species of wood-eating termites found in Huangzhou, China, was investigated in three laboratory experiments of aggression and detection, plus a year-long field survey of termite foraging activity. Dominance depended on body size, with largest species winning overwhelmingly in paired contests with equal numbers of individuals, although the advantage was reduced in paired competitions with equal biomass. The termites could detect different species from used filter papers, as larger species searched through paper used by smaller species, and smaller species avoided papers used by larger species. The largest species maintained activity all year, but in low abundance, whereas the second largest species increased activity in summer, and the smallest species increased their activity in winter. The termite species displayed a dominance hierarchy based on fighting ability, with a temporal change in foraging to avoid larger, more dominant species. The low abundance of the largest species, here Macrotermes barneyi, may be a function of human disturbance, which allows subordinate species to increase. Thus, competitive release may explain the increase in abundance of pest species, such as Coptotermes formosanus, in highly modified areas, such as urban systems.

scholarly journals Mobile EEG identifies the re-allocation of attention during real-world activity

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Ladouce ◽  
David I. Donaldson ◽  
Paul A. Dudchenko ◽  
Magdalena Ietswaart
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Sensory Processing ◽  
Real World ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Attentional Resources ◽  
Processing Demands ◽  
Neural Marker ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Human Participants

Abstract The distribution of attention between competing processing demands can have dramatic real-world consequences, however little is known about how limited attentional resources are distributed during real-world behaviour. Here we employ mobile EEG to characterise the allocation of attention across multiple sensory-cognitive processing demands during naturalistic movement. We used a neural marker of attention, the Event-Related Potential (ERP) P300 effect, to show that attention to targets is reduced when human participants walk compared to when they stand still. In a second experiment, we show that this reduction in attention is not caused by the act of walking per se. A third experiment identified the independent processing demands driving reduced attention to target stimuli during motion. ERP data reveals that the reduction in attention seen during walking reflects the linear and additive sum of the processing demands produced by visual and inertial stimulation. The mobile cognition approach used here shows how limited resources are precisely re-allocated according to the sensory processing demands that occur during real-world behaviour.

Resource variability and the collapse of a dominance hierarchy in a colour polymorphic species

Behaviour ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 155 (6) ◽  
pp. 443-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawson M. Brown ◽  
Matthew S. Lattanzio
Keyword(s):  
Social Dominance ◽  
Dominance Hierarchy ◽  
Environmental Variability ◽  
Behavioural Flexibility ◽  
Dominance Hierarchies ◽  
Species Dominance ◽  
Polymorphic Species ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Colour Morphs ◽  
Resource Variability

Abstract Intraspecific social dominance hierarchies should be influenced by environmental variation; however, in colour polymorphic species, dominance hierarchies are often assumed fixed, and thus insensitive to environmental variability. We ran a series of experiments using the colour polymorphic long-tailed brush lizard (Urosaurus graciosus) to challenge this assumption. We staged contests between orange and yellow morph males over a single heated perch, two perches at the same temperature, or two perches differing in temperature. Our first experiment revealed that orange-throated males are socially dominant. However, this hierarchy collapsed in our other experiments as yellow males became more aggressive. Interestingly, both males only ever secured their own perch where the perches differed in temperature. These findings mirror observations of morph behavioural flexibility in nature and studies of behaviour–environment interactions in non-polymorphic taxa. We conclude that colour morphs may have an underappreciated ability to assess resource-level changes and respond with concomitant flexibility in behaviour.

scholarly journals Global network structure of dominance hierarchy of ant workers

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (99) ◽  
pp. 20140599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroyuki Shimoji ◽  
Masato S. Abe ◽  
Kazuki Tsuji ◽  
Naoki Masuda
Keyword(s):  
Dominance Hierarchy ◽  
Directed Acyclic Graphs ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Dominance Relationship ◽  
Dominance Hierarchies ◽  
Animal Group ◽  
Acyclic Graphs ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Worker Attacks ◽  
Large Groups

Dominance hierarchy among animals is widespread in various species and believed to serve to regulate resource allocation within an animal group. Unlike small groups, however, detection and quantification of linear hierarchy in large groups of animals are a difficult task. Here, we analyse aggression-based dominance hierarchies formed by worker ants in Diacamma sp. as large directed networks. We show that the observed dominance networks are perfect or approximate directed acyclic graphs, which are consistent with perfect linear hierarchy. The observed networks are also sparse and random but significantly different from networks generated through thinning of the perfect linear tournament (i.e. all individuals are linearly ranked and dominance relationship exists between every pair of individuals). These results pertain to global structure of the networks, which contrasts with the previous studies inspecting frequencies of different types of triads. In addition, the distribution of the out-degree (i.e. number of workers that the focal worker attacks), not in-degree (i.e. number of workers that attack the focal worker), of each observed network is right-skewed. Those having excessively large out-degrees are located near the top, but not the top, of the hierarchy. We also discuss evolutionary implications of the discovered properties of dominance networks.

Dominance as a competence domain, and the evolutionary origins of respect and contempt

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Chapais
Keyword(s):  
Dominance Hierarchies ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
Evolutionary Origins

AbstractThe hypothesis of a phylogenetic connection between protorespect in primate dominance hierarchies and respect in human prestige hierarchies lies in the principle that dominance is a domain of competence like others and, hence, that high-ranking primates have protoprestige. The idea that dominant primates manifest protocontempt to subordinates suggests that “looking down on” followers is intrinsic to leadership in humans, but that the expression of contempt varies critically in relation to the socioecological context.

scholarly journals Social dominance and cooperation in female vampire bats

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 210266
Author(s):  
Rachel J. Crisp ◽  
Lauren J. N. Brent ◽  
Gerald G. Carter
Keyword(s):  
Dominance Hierarchy ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Experimental System ◽  
Food Sharing ◽  
Competitive Interactions ◽  
Female Dominance ◽  
Cooperative Relationships ◽  
Vampire Bats ◽  
In The Wild

When group-living animals develop individualized social relationships, they often regulate cooperation and conflict through a dominance hierarchy. Female common vampire bats have been an experimental system for studying cooperative relationships, yet surprisingly little is known about female conflict. Here, we recorded the outcomes of 1023 competitive interactions over food provided ad libitum in a captive colony of 33 vampire bats (24 adult females and their young). We found a weakly linear dominance hierarchy using three common metrics (Landau's h ’ measure of linearity, triangle transitivity and directional consistency). However, patterns of female dominance were less structured than in many other group-living mammals. Female social rank was not clearly predicted by body size, age, nor reproductive status, and competitive interactions were not correlated with kinship, grooming nor food sharing. We therefore found no evidence that females groomed or shared food up a hierarchy or that differences in rank explained asymmetries in grooming or food sharing. A possible explanation for such apparently egalitarian relationships among female vampire bats is the scale of competition. Female vampire bats that are frequent roostmates might not often directly compete for food in the wild.

scholarly journals The Emergence of Egalitarianism in a Model of Early Human Societies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillaume Calmettes ◽  
James N. Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Population Model ◽  
Dominance Hierarchy ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Moral Belief ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Dominance Hierarchies ◽  
Model Simulations ◽  
Optimal Power ◽  
Dominance Relationships ◽  
Early Human

AbstractHow did egalitarianism emerge in early human societies? In contrast to dominance hierarchies in non-human primates, human simple forager bands are typically egalitarian, with male hunters often serving as the collective alpha. Here we present a thermodynamics-inspired simple population model, based on stochastic optimization of dominance relationships, in which a dominance hierarchy of individuals with exclusively self-centered characteristics (the desire to dominate, resentment at being dominated) transitions spontaneously to egalitarianism as their capacity for language develops. Language, specifically gossip, allows resentment against being dominated to promote the formation of antidominance coalitions which destabilize the alpha position for individuals, leading to a phase transition in which a coalition of the full population suddenly becomes dominant. Thus, egalitarianism emerges suddenly as the optimal power sharing arrangement in a population of selfish individuals without any inherently altruistic qualities. We speculate that egalitarianism driven by punishment for exhibiting alpha-like behavior may then set the stage for genuinely altruistic traits to propagate as predicted by game theory models. Based on model simulations, we also predict that egalitarianism is a pre-condition for adaptation of tools as weapons. Potential implications for origins of human moral belief systems are discussed.

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