Self-structuring properties of dominance hierarchies a new perspective

Abstract

Using aggressive behavior, animals of many species establish dominance hierarchies in both nature and the laboratory. Rank in these hierarchies influences many aspects of animals' lives including their health, physiology, weight gain, genetic expression, and ability to reproduce and raise viable offspring. In this chapter, we define dominance relationships and dominance hierarchies, discuss several model species used in dominance studies, and consider factors that predict the outcomes of dominance encounters in dyads and small groups of animals. Researchers have shown that individual differences in attributes, as well as in states (recent behavioral experiences), influence the outcomes of dominance encounters in dyads. Attributes include physical, physiological, and genetic characteristics while states include recent experiences such as winning or losing earlier contests. However, surprisingly, we marshal experimental and theoretical evidence to demonstrate that these differences have significantly less or no ability to predict the outcomes of dominance encounters for animals in groups as small as three or four individuals. Given these results, we pose an alternative research question: How do animals of so many species form hierarchies with characteristic linear structures despite the relatively low predictability based upon individual differences? In answer to this question, we review the evidence for an alternative approach suggesting that dominance hierarchies are self-structuring. That is, we suggest that linear forms of organization in hierarchies emerge from several kinds of behavioral processes, or sequences of interaction, that are common across many different species of animals from ants to chickens and fish and even some primates. This new approach inspires a variety of further questions for research.