Abstract
Although social hierarchies are recognized as dynamic systems, they are typically treated as static entities for practical reasons. Here, we ask what we can learn from a dynamical view of dominance, and provide a research agenda for the next decades. We identify five broad questions at the individual, dyadic and group levels, exploring the causes and consequences of individual changes in rank, the dynamics underlying dyadic dominance relationships, and the origins and impacts of social instability. Although challenges remain, we propose avenues for overcoming them. We suggest distinguishing between different types of social mobility to provide conceptual clarity about hierarchy dynamics at the individual level, and emphasize the need to explore how these dynamic processes produce dominance trajectories over individual lifespans and impact selection on status-seeking behaviour. At the dyadic level, there is scope for deeper exploration of decision-making processes leading to observed interactions, and how stable but malleable relationships emerge from these interactions. Across scales, model systems where rank is manipulable will be extremely useful for testing hypotheses about dominance dynamics. Long-term individual-based studies will also be critical for understanding the impact of rare events, and for interrogating dynamics that unfold over lifetimes and generations.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
Dominance is one of the most widely studied social behaviours, but is typically studied using a static approach in which agonistic interactions are tabulated and used to infer individual ‘rank’ in the dominance hierarchy [1,2,3]
Challenges solutions lack of conceptual clarity about rank dynamics at individual level accurately measuring social mobility it is difficult to study processes occurring at lifetime scale requires data that go beyond direct interactions—e.g. initiation, avoidance, long-distance signals, behavioural state, etc
If only a few individuals or interactions are sampled during the periods over which mobility is assessed, this will lead to an overestimation of the number of changes and an underestimation of the rate of change
Summary
Dominance is one of the most widely studied social behaviours, but is typically studied using a static approach in which agonistic interactions are tabulated and used to infer individual ‘rank’ in the dominance hierarchy [1,2,3]. Challenges solutions lack of conceptual clarity about rank dynamics at individual level accurately measuring social mobility it is difficult to study processes occurring at lifetime scale requires data that go beyond direct interactions—e.g. initiation, avoidance, long-distance signals, behavioural state, etc.
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