Department of Biology, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, United States.
Behav Processes. 2021 Mar;184:104337. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2021.104337. Epub 2021 Jan 27.
'Winner' and 'loser' effects have been demonstrated in a broad range of species, but such investigations are often limited to the effects of prior contest outcomes on future agonistic interactions. Much less is known about the impacts of winning or losing contests on other aspects of individual behavior, like courtship interactions and sheltering behavior. In this investigation, I examined the effect of prior contest outcomes on sheltering behavior in the crayfish Faxonius virilis. I predicted that winners of contests would spend less time inside shelters and more time exploring, while losers of contests would spend more time inside shelters and less time exploring. I compared individual sheltering behavior before and after staged dyadic encounters between competitively mismatched individuals. This experiment revealed strong effects on the behavior of contest losers, which showed significant increases in the amount of time spent inside the shelter immediately after the contest. However, there was no significant change in the sheltering behavior of contest winners. These results reinforce the idea that contest outcomes can affect individual behaviors other than agonistic behavior, and suggest that losing a contest may motivate individual crayfish to engage in less-risky behavior, at least for a brief period after the contest.
“胜者”和“败者”效应在广泛的物种中都有表现，但此类研究往往仅限于先前竞争结果对未来竞争互动的影响。对于获胜或失败的竞争对个体行为的其他方面（如求偶互动和庇护行为）的影响，人们知之甚少。在这项研究中，我调查了先前竞争结果对 F. virilis 个体庇护行为的影响。我预测，竞争中的胜者会花更少的时间在庇护所内，而花更多的时间在探索上，而竞争中的败者则会花更多的时间在庇护所内，而花更少的时间在探索上。我比较了个体在有组织的二元遭遇之前和之后的庇护行为。这个实验揭示了对竞争失败者行为的强烈影响，他们在比赛后立即在庇护所内花费的时间明显增加。然而，竞争胜利者的庇护行为没有显著变化。这些结果强化了这样一种观点，即竞争结果可以影响竞争行为以外的个体行为，并表明输掉一场比赛可能会促使个体小龙虾采取风险较低的行为，至少在比赛结束后的短暂时间内是这样。
