Abstract

Intra-species contests are common in the animal kingdom and can have fitness consequences. Most research on what predicts contest outcome focuses on morphology, although differences in personality and cognition may also be involved. Supporting this, more proactive individuals often have dominant status, although the causality of this relationship is rarely investigated. Contest initiators often win; thus, individuals that are more proactive in their personality (e.g., more aggressive, risk-taking) or cognition (e.g., more optimistic, impulsive) may initiate contests more often. To investigate this, we assayed the behavior and cognition of sexually mature male and female red junglefowl (Gallus gallus), a species in which both sexes contest over social status, before staging intra-sexual contests. We confirm that contest initiators were more likely to win. In males, individuals that behaved more boldly in a novel arena test were more likely to initiate and win contests. Female initiators tended to be less active in novel object test, more aggressive in a restrained opponent test, and respond less optimistically in a cognitive judgement bias test, whereas the main predictor of whether a female would win a contest was whether she initiated it. These results suggest that behaviors attributed to proactive and reactive personalities, and-at least for female red junglefowl-optimism, can affect contest initiation and outcome. Therefore, within species, and depending on sex, different aspects of behavior and cognition may independently affect contest initiation and outcome. The generality of these findings, and their fitness consequences, requires further investigation.

Keywords

Animal cognition; Animal personality; Contests; Gallus gallus; Intra-sexual selection

Published in

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
2019, Volume: 73, number: 11, article number: 149

SLU Authors

• Forslind, Sara

  • Department of Applied Animal Science and Welfare, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Animal and Dairy Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-019-2762-0

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/103031