Prior contest information: mechanisms underlying winner and loser effects |
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Authors: | Yuying Hsu I-Han Lee Chung-Kai Lu |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Life Science, National Taiwan Normal University, 88, Section 4, Ting-Chou Rd, Taipei, 116, Taiwan |
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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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Keywords: | Winner– loser effect Animal contest Self-assessment Social-cue Killifish Kryptolebias marmoratus |
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