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Juvenile social experience affects pairing success at adulthood: congruence with the loser effect?

ABSTRACT: Social interactions with adults are often critical for the development of mating behaviours. However, the potential role of other primary social partners such as juvenile counterparts is rarely considered. Most interestingly, it is not known whether interactions with juvenile females improve males' courtship and whether, similar to the winner and loser effects in a fighting context--outcome of these interactions shapes males' behaviour in future encounters. We investigated the combined effects of male quality and juvenile social experience on pairing success at adulthood in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). We manipulated brood size to alter male quality and then placed males in either same- or mixed-sex juvenile dyads until adulthood. We found that males from reduced broods obtained more copulations and males from mixed-sex dyads had more complete courtships. Furthermore, independent of their quality, males that failed to pair with juvenile females, but not juvenile males, had a lower pairing success at adulthood. Our study shows that negative social experience with peers during adolescence may be a potent determinant of pairing success that can override the effects of early environmental conditions on male attractiveness and thereby supports the occurrence of an analogous process to the loser effect in a mating context.

SUBMITTER: Mariette MM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3735264 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Juvenile social experience affects pairing success at adulthood: congruence with the loser effect?

Mariette Mylene M MM Cathaud Charlène C Chambon Rémi R Vignal Clémentine C

Proceedings. Biological sciences 20130731 1767

Social interactions with adults are often critical for the development of mating behaviours. However, the potential role of other primary social partners such as juvenile counterparts is rarely considered. Most interestingly, it is not known whether interactions with juvenile females improve males' courtship and whether, similar to the winner and loser effects in a fighting context--outcome of these interactions shapes males' behaviour in future encounters. We investigated the combined effects o ...[more]

PMID: 23902911

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Project description:Social hierarchies are often found in group-living animals and can be formed through pairwise aggressive interactions. The dominance rank can influence reproductive success (RS) with a skew towards high-ranking individuals. Using game theory, we investigate how the opportunity for differently ranked individuals to achieve RS influences the costs of hierarchy formation and the strength of winner and loser effects. In our model, individuals adjust their aggressive and submissive behaviour towards others through reinforcement learning. The learning is based on rewards and penalties, which depend on relative fighting ability. From individual-based simulations, we determine evolutionary equilibria of traits such as learning rates. We examine situations that differ in the extent of monopolisation of contested RS by dominants and in the proportion of total RS that is contested. The model implements two kinds of fighting costs: a decrease in effective fighting ability from damage (loss of condition) and a risk of mortality that increases with the total accumulated damage. Either of these costs can limit the amount of fighting. We find that individuals form stable dominance hierarchies, with a positive correlation between dominance position and fighting ability. The accumulated costs differ between dominance positions, with the highest costs paid by low or intermediately ranked individuals. Costs tend to be higher in high-skew situations. We identify a 'stay-in, opt-out' syndrome, comprising a range from weaker (stay-in) to stronger (opt-out) winner-loser effects. We interpret the opt-out phenotype to be favoured by selection on lower ranked individuals to opt out of contests over social dominance, because it is more pronounced when more of the total RS is uncontested. We discuss our results in relation to field and experimental observations and argue that there is a need for empirical investigation of the behaviour and reproductive success of lower ranked individuals.

Dataset Information

Juvenile social experience affects pairing success at adulthood: congruence with the loser effect?

Publications

Juvenile social experience affects pairing success at adulthood: congruence with the loser effect?

Similar Datasets

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