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Kleptoparasitic Melees—Modelling Food Stealing Featuring Contests with Multiple Individuals

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Abstract

Kleptoparasitism is the stealing of food by one animal from another. This has been modelled in various ways before, but all previous models have only allowed contests between two individuals. We investigate a model of kleptoparasitism where individuals are allowed to fight in groups of more than two, as often occurs in real populations. We find the equilibrium distribution of the population amongst various behavioural states, conditional upon the strategies played and environmental parameters, and then find evolutionarily stable challenging strategies. We find that there is always at least one ESS, but sometimes there are two or more, and discuss the circumstances when particular ESSs occur, and when there are likely to be multiple ESSs.

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Author notes

  1. M. Broom

    Present address: Centre for Mathematical Science, City University, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9RF, UK

    M. Broom

  2. Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, 27402, USA

    J. Rychtář

Authors
  1. M. Broom
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  2. J. Rychtář
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to J. Rychtář.

Additional information

The research was supported by the EPSRC grant EP/E043402/1 and the NSF grant 0634182.

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Broom, M., Rychtář, J. Kleptoparasitic Melees—Modelling Food Stealing Featuring Contests with Multiple Individuals. Bull Math Biol 73, 683–699 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11538-010-9546-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11538-010-9546-z

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