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The cost of aggression in an animal without weapons
- Source :
- Ethology. 126:24-31
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- Wiley, 2019.
-
Abstract
- To understand the prevalence and conditional use of aggression among animals, one has to know its costs and benefits. The obvious cost of aggression in animals that possess teeth, claws or other specialized weaponry is injury. Many species, however, do not have such body parts and thus cannot readily injure others. The cost of aggression in these animals is not well studied. We tested whether aggression has a fitness cost in fruit flies, which can serve as a model species for animals without weapons that engage in aggression. In three experiments employing distinct protocols, we allowed focal flies to fight for control of an attractive food patch over 4 days and then compared their survivorship to that of flies not engaged in conflict. In all three experiments, fly survivorship was lower in the aggression than no‐aggression treatments. Microscopic examination revealed no differences in wing damage between flies of the aggression and no‐aggression treatments. The two most likely, non‐mutually exclusive explanations for lower survivorship post‐fighting are physiological changes due to stress, and metabolic alterations associated with a life‐history strategy optimized for high‐conflict settings.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
Aggression
fungi
05 social sciences
Biology
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
Survivorship curve
medicine
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Animal Science and Zoology
050102 behavioral science & comparative psychology
medicine.symptom
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Demography
Fitness cost
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 14390310 and 01791613
- Volume :
- 126
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Ethology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........761220bc0f40ca0ee9bbdd9e89fdec0f