Abstract
A century ago, foundational work by Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe described a ‘pecking order’ in chicken societies, where individuals could be ordered according to their ability to exert their influence over their group-mates. Now known as dominance hierarchies, these structures have been shown to influence a plethora of individual characteristics and outcomes, situating dominance research as a pillar of the study of modern social ecology and evolution. Here, we first review some of the major questions that have been answered about dominance hierarchies in the last 100 years. Next, we introduce the contributions to this theme issue and summarize how they provide ongoing insight in the epistemology, physiology and neurobiology, hierarchical structure, and dynamics of dominance. These contributions employ the full range of research approaches available to modern biologists. Cross-cutting themes emerging from these contributions include a focus on cognitive underpinnings of dominance, the application of network-analytical approaches, and the utility of experimental rank manipulations for revealing causal relationships. Reflection on the last 100 years of dominance research reveals how Schjelderup-Ebbe's early ideas and the subsequent research helped drive a shift from an essentialist view of species characteristics to the modern recognition of rich inter-individual variation in social, behavioural and physiological phenotypes.This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.
Highlights
Cite this article: Strauss ED, Curley JP, Shizuka D, Hobson EA. 2022 The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies
Anyone who thinks the inhabitants of a chicken yard are thoughtless happy creatures with a daily life of undisturbed pleasure ... is thoroughly mistaken
In 1922, years later, he published these observations from his childhood data notebooks as his enduring work [1] describing a ‘Hackliste’, translated to English as a ‘pecking order’ [3], and known in academic circles as a dominance hierarchy
Summary
Anyone who thinks the inhabitants of a chicken yard are thoughtless happy creatures with a daily life of undisturbed pleasure ... is thoroughly mistaken. At the age of ten, Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe’s fascination with domestic chickens led him to collect systematic data on patterns in the aggressive interactions among individual chickens [2] At this young age, he saw past the chickens’ outwardly similar appearance and mannerisms, and by learning to identify each individual, he became captivated by the differences in behaviour among them. Dominance hierarchies appear frequently in the contemporary study of animal physiology [6], immunology [7], cognition [8], animal welfare and husbandry [9], cooperative breeding and reproductive skew [10], human health and ageing [11], modern human behaviour [12], and human evolution [13] This theme issue marks the 100th birthday of the concept of a dominance hierarchy. We briefly summarize the features of dominance hierarchies that have been well established over the last 100 years, highlight the emerging topics that will drive the century of new insights into this fundamental social structure
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