Edmonds Elizabeth, Briffa Mark
School of Science and Sport, University of Western Scotland, High Street, Paisley PA1 2BE, UK.
Marine Biology and Ecology Research Centre, Plymouth University, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL3 8AA, UK
Biol Lett. 2016 Jan;12(1):20150884. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2015.0884.
Fighting animals use a variety of information sources to make strategic decisions. A neglected potential source of information is an individual's own performance during a fight. Surprisingly, this possibility has yet to be incorporated into the large body of theory concerning the evolution of aggressive behaviour. Here, by experimentally dampening the impact of their shell rapping behaviour, we test for the possibility that attacking hermit crabs monitor their own fight performance. Attackers with dampened raps did not show a reduction in the number of raps used. By contrast, they showed an increased frequency of a less intense agonistic behaviour, shell rocking. This change in behaviour, in attackers that are forced to rap weakly, indicates that they assess their own agonistic behaviour.
争斗中的动物会利用各种信息来源来做出战略决策。一个被忽视的潜在信息源是个体在争斗中的自身表现。令人惊讶的是，这种可能性尚未被纳入有关攻击行为进化的大量理论中。在这里，我们通过实验减弱其敲壳行为的影响，来测试攻击型寄居蟹是否会监测自身的争斗表现。敲壳行为受到抑制的攻击者敲壳的次数并未减少。相比之下，它们表现出一种强度较低的争斗行为——壳摇晃——的频率增加。这种在被迫轻敲的攻击者身上出现的行为变化表明，它们会评估自己的争斗行为。
