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Fighting experience (specifically winning or losing a fight) can significantly alter boldness, a component of resource-holding potential (RHP). Previous studies have shown that both the repeatability of boldness and mean-level boldness can be affected by fighting experience and that these effects are strongest in the recipients of agonistic behaviour. However, whether these postfight changes in boldness impact future contest success and whether subsequent contests further affect boldness remain unknown. Furthermore, little is known about the effects of the specific tactics used within a fight (within-fight experience) and how these might influence future fight performance and boldness. Here, we investigated the relationship between fighting success and boldness (measured as recovery time when startled) across repeated contests in the beadlet sea anemone, Actinia equina , measuring boldness on five occasions before, between and after two contests. We found that boldness (both repeatability and mean-level) was generally robust to the effects of fighting experience, apart from a decrease in the immediate boldness of losers after their second fight. Furthermore, we found that while prefight boldness significantly predicted fighting success and the level of aggression used in an individual's first fight, it did not predict victory or aggression in the second fight. Our findings thus indicate that different traits may be important in determining fighting success in consecutive fights and, moreover, that fighting experience may alter which traits contribute to an individual's RHP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical models of injurious animal contests, such as the cumulative assessment model (CAM), predict that an individual's decision to give up and retreat from a fight is determined by reaching a maximum cost threshold ( C max ). Under this model, an individual gives up when the accumulated costs of persisting exceed this threshold. CAM predicts that the velocity with which C max is reached depends on both the energetic (physiological) costs of remaining in the fight and the damage costs of injuries received. Here we propose that damage costs are accumulated not only by receiving injuries, but in some cases also by inflicting injury (attacking). We argue that these self-inflicted damage costs need to be incorporated into theoretical frameworks to fully understand what drives an individual to make the decision to give up, and we call for further research into this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Same-sex sexual behaviour (SSB) is widespread across taxa. One adaptive hypothesis to explain the occurrence and maintenance of SSB is that it acts to intensify or diminish aggression by providing males with a means to reinforce or resolve dominance. However, evidence for this hypothesis is very limited across taxa and the possibility that SSB acts as an extension of intrasexual competition remains contentious. We investigated the role of SSB in intensifying or diminishing aggression in the broad-horned flour beetle, Gnatocerus cornutus . We tested the hypothesis that SSB is an extension of male–male competition by observing how the occurrence of SSB and the stability of SSB courtship roles (i.e. whether males switched between mounting and being mounted) influenced levels of aggression within pairs. We found that, typically, males rapidly establish fixed SSB roles and moreover that the occurrence of SSB and the stability of SSB roles had a highly significant effect on levels of aggression observed within pairs. Pairs in which one male consistently mounted the other showed significantly lower levels of aggression than pairs in which neither male exhibited SSB or in which males continuously switched SSB roles and attempted to mount each other. Furthermore, males that were consistently on the receiving end of SSB demonstrated lower propensity to court females and had a lower mating success than active males. This pattern was analogous to that found in loser males as a result of fighting. Males that lost fights also courted less and had lower mating success than males that won fights. Our findings provide the first empirical support for the hypothesis that SSB is an extension of male–male competition. Furthermore, our results suggest that SSB may act as a display, allowing males to resolve dominance hierarchies without escalating into an injurious fight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]