Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, , Tremough Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 8BG, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2013 Oct 28;368(1631):20130076. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2013.0076. Print 2013.
Members of animal societies compete over resources and reproduction, but the extent to which such conflicts of interest are resolved peacefully (without recourse to costly or wasteful acts of aggression) varies widely. Here, we describe two theoretical mechanisms that can help to understand variation in the incidence of overt behavioural conflict: (i) destruction competition and (ii) the use of threats. The two mechanisms make different assumptions about the degree to which competitors are socially sensitive (responsive to real-time changes in the behaviour of their social partners). In each case, we discuss how the model assumptions relate to biological reality and highlight the genetic, ecological and informational factors that are likely to promote peaceful conflict resolution, drawing on empirical examples. We suggest that, relative to males, reproductive conflict among females may be more frequently resolved peacefully through threats of punishment, rather than overt acts of punishment, because (i) offspring are more costly to produce for females and (ii) reproduction is more difficult to conceal. The main need now is for empirical work to test whether the mechanisms described here can indeed explain how social conflict can be resolved without overt aggression.
动物社会中的成员会为资源和繁殖而竞争，但这些利益冲突得到和平解决（无需诉诸昂贵或浪费的攻击行为）的程度差异很大。在这里，我们描述了两种可以帮助理解明显行为冲突发生率变化的理论机制：（i）破坏竞争和（ii）威胁的使用。这两种机制对竞争对手的社会敏感性（对其社交伙伴行为的实时变化做出反应）程度有不同的假设。在每种情况下，我们都讨论了模型假设如何与生物现实相关联，并强调了可能促进和平解决冲突的遗传、生态和信息因素，同时引用了实证例子。我们认为，与雄性相比，雌性之间的繁殖冲突可能更频繁地通过惩罚威胁而不是公开的惩罚行为来和平解决，因为（i）雌性生育后代的成本更高，（ii）繁殖更难隐瞒。现在的主要需求是进行实证研究，以测试这里描述的机制是否确实可以解释社会冲突如何在没有公开攻击的情况下得到解决。
