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Is dominance the only factor determining access to food in an agonistic context? An experiment with captive male mouflon

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Abstract

In fulfilling their daily activities, animals must expend the least amount of energy possible while feeding in order to optimise their energy balance. Food is removed by congeners as a result of exploitation competition. When a resource becomes limited, an increase in the probability of interference competition (direct competition for the resource) is triggered. While a high social rank may increase foraging time and resource access, this status also has detrimental facets. To explore the benefits of dominance/aggression in a context where true monopolisation of resources could be advantageous, we tested three hypotheses related to the patchiness of resources, agonistic activity (i.e. dominance and aggression) and individual attributes (i.e. morphology and behaviour) in a group of captive mouflon males (Ovis ammon musimon). Feeding performance was analysed using linear mixed models based on predictors about patchiness of the resource, and behavioural and morphological indices. No clear relationship was found between dominance and feeding performance. However, the general pattern showed (i) a decrease in overall feeding performance with the dispersion of the resource; (ii) that the discrepancy in feeding performance among individuals was maximal when confronted with intermediate conditions; and (iii) that alternative tactics allowed subordinate individuals to achieve a similar feeding performance to dominants. The results of this study suggest that, over and above agonistic behaviour and dominance, the motivation of individuals and its variation over time, though difficult to evaluate, could be key to understanding the coexistence of alternative behavioural tactics.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the technical staff of the CEFS laboratory, especially J.-M. Angibault, N. Cèbe and L. Desneux, for their support in the field. Some anonymous referees made helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript. E. Serrano was supported by the postdoctoral program (SFRH/BPD/96637/2013) of the Fundação para a Ciência ea Tecnologia, Portugal. We are grateful to Mark Hewison for his valuable revision and suggestions and to Peter Winterton and Sarah Young for polishing up the English text.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire de Comportement et d’Ecologie de la Faune Sauvage, INRA, BP 27, F-31326, Castanet Tolosan Cedex, France

    Nicolas Kidjo, Eric Bideau & Georges Gonzalez

  2. Servei d’Ecopatologia de Fauna Salvatge (SEFaS), Departament de Medicina i Cirurgia Animals, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB), E-08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

    Emmanuel Serrano

  3. CESAM, Departamento de Biología, Universidade de Aveiro, Campus Universitario de Santiago, 3810-193, Aveiro, Portugal

    Emmanuel Serrano

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  1. Nicolas Kidjo
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Correspondence to Georges Gonzalez.

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Kidjo, N., Serrano, E., Bideau, E. et al. Is dominance the only factor determining access to food in an agonistic context? An experiment with captive male mouflon. acta ethol 19, 69–79 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10211-015-0226-8

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