Abstract

Intra-species contests are common in the animal kingdom and can have fitness consequences. Most research on what predicts contest outcome focuses on morphology, although differences in personality and cognition may also be involved. Supporting this, more proactive individuals often have dominant status, although the causality of this relationship is rarely investigated. Contest initiators often win; thus, individuals that are more proactive in their personality (e.g., more aggressive, risk-taking) or cognition (e.g., more optimistic, impulsive) may initiate contests more often. To investigate this, we assayed the behavior and cognition of sexually mature male and female red junglefowl (Gallus gallus), a species in which both sexes contest over social status, before staging intra-sexual contests. We confirm that contest initiators were more likely to win. In males, individuals that behaved more boldly in a novel arena test were more likely to initiate and win contests. Female initiators tended to be less active in novel object test, more aggressive in a restrained opponent test, and respond less optimistically in a cognitive judgement bias test, whereas the main predictor of whether a female would win a contest was whether she initiated it. These results suggest that behaviors attributed to proactive and reactive personalities, and—at least for female red junglefowl—optimism, can affect contest initiation and outcome. Therefore, within species, and depending on sex, different aspects of behavior and cognition may independently affect contest initiation and outcome. The generality of these findings, and their fitness consequences, requires further investigation.Significance statementIn red junglefowl, we explored how behavior previously shown to describe personality, cognition, and affective state affected initiation and outcome of intra-sexual contests, by staging contests between sexually mature individuals previously assayed in behavioral and cognitive tests. In both sexes, contest initiators usually won. Bolder males were more likely to initiate and win contests. Female contests initiators were less active, more aggressive, and less optimistic. Our results suggest that personality and cognition could affect the initiation and outcome of contests and that how this occurs may differ between sexes.

Highlights

  • Intra-sexual contests are prevalent in the animal kingdom, and contest winners enjoy increased access to resources, either directly or indirectly by obtaining a higher social status (Andersson 1994; Elwood and Arnott 2012)

  • In the best models for contest initiation in males, latency to move in the novel arena test was a significant predictor

  • In the best models for male contest outcome, latency to move in the novel arena test was a significant predictor

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Summary

Introduction

Intra-sexual contests are prevalent in the animal kingdom, and contest winners enjoy increased access to resources, either directly or indirectly by obtaining a higher social status (Andersson 1994; Elwood and Arnott 2012). Morphological differences sometimes, but not always, predict the outcome of such contests (e.g., Andersson 1994; Briffa and Hardy 2013; Chichinadze et al 2014). Differences in personality (i.e., individual differences in behavior that are consistent across time and/or context, Dall et al 2004) and cognition (i.e., how individuals perceive, store, and act on information from environmental stimuli; Shettleworth 2010) can 149 Page 2 of 12. Understanding the potential fitness consequences of individual variation is crucial for understanding how this variation may evolve. Studies investigating this (e.g., Hübner et al 2018) are rare. The role of personality and, especially, cognition, in determining the outcome of intrasexual contests is currently unclear

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