Prior contest information: Mechanisms underlying winner and loser effects

Yuying Hsu; I. Han Lee; Chung Kai Lu

doi:10.1007/s00265-009-0791-9

Prior contest information: Mechanisms underlying winner and loser effects

Yuying Hsu^*, I. Han Lee, Chung Kai Lu

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Life Science

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

59 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Animals' contest performance is influenced by their recent contest experiences. This influence could either be exerted by individuals re-estimating their own fighting ability (self-assessment) or by their opponents responding to status-related cues (social-cue mechanism) or both. Individuals of Kryptolebias marmoratus, a hermaphroditic killifish, were given different contest experiences to examine how two opponents' prior experiences combined to determine their contest interaction and to test both of these mechanisms as potential causes of the observed experience effect. Our data showed that losers' decisions to retreat at different stages of a contest were influenced by their own but not by the winners' contest experience-a result consistent with self-assessment but not with the social-cue mechanism. An association between the fish initiating and winning contests thus probably arose because both were correlated with an individual's assessment of its fighting ability, but not because initiating contests made opponents more inclined to retreat.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1247-1257
Number of pages	11
Journal	Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
Volume	63
Issue number	9
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-009-0791-9
Publication status	Published - 2009 Jul

Keywords

Animal contest
Killifish, Kryptolebias marmoratus
Self-assessment
Social-cue
Winner-loser effect

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Animal Science and Zoology

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10.1007/s00265-009-0791-9

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title = "Prior contest information: Mechanisms underlying winner and loser effects",

abstract = "Animals' contest performance is influenced by their recent contest experiences. This influence could either be exerted by individuals re-estimating their own fighting ability (self-assessment) or by their opponents responding to status-related cues (social-cue mechanism) or both. Individuals of Kryptolebias marmoratus, a hermaphroditic killifish, were given different contest experiences to examine how two opponents' prior experiences combined to determine their contest interaction and to test both of these mechanisms as potential causes of the observed experience effect. Our data showed that losers' decisions to retreat at different stages of a contest were influenced by their own but not by the winners' contest experience-a result consistent with self-assessment but not with the social-cue mechanism. An association between the fish initiating and winning contests thus probably arose because both were correlated with an individual's assessment of its fighting ability, but not because initiating contests made opponents more inclined to retreat.",

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note = "Funding Information: Acknowledgements We thank Alan Watson for help with comments and on the manuscript. We would like to thank Michael Taborsky and two other reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript. This research was supported by Taiwan National Science Council (NSC 91-2316-B-003-001, 92-2311-B-003-009). Experiments were conducted in accordance with a protocol approved by The Animal Care and Use Committee of National Taiwan Normal University (permit #92019) and conformed to guidelines of the Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan, Republic of China.",

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Prior contest information: Mechanisms underlying winner and loser effects

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