Synonyms
Definition
Social organization in which animals interact most of the time with aggressive or submissive behaviors, leading to the creation of a rank system.
Introduction
Dominance hierarchies were first cited by Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe in 1922, when he described the social organization of domestic chickens. The so-called pecking order describes the order in which individuals have access to food. This order was maintained by aggressive interactions, mainly pecking, in which the chicken that gives pecking to another one was called dominant and was never pecked by others. The dominant also has more access to food. The chicken that was pecked was called subordinate.
Function
The emergence of dominance hierarchies in social animals is very common in nature and has the function to reduce costs and risks on injury during resource (mainly food, territory, or mates) acquisition and defense. In an ultimate view, dominance hierarchies are supposed to increase...
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References
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Chase, I., Tovey, C., & Murch, P. (2003). Two’s company, Three’s a crowd: Differences in dominance relationships in isolated versus socially embedded pairs of fish. Behaviour, 140(10), 1193–1217. https://doi.org/10.1163/156853903771980558.
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Kochhann, D. (2022). Dominance Hierarchy. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55065-7_670
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55065-7_670
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