Comment fight
As Kommentkampf in is behavioral biology a ritualized battle refer to operations where the risk of injury to the opponent is relatively low. Comment fights have a precisely defined - and therefore largely predictable for the opponents - sequence of behaviors; they are widespread in the animal kingdom, for example in connection with determining the hierarchy within a group of animals or in the course of a courtship ritual . The characteristic of the comment fight is that during the combat action mechanisms of aggression inhibition are simultaneously active, so that the combatants avoid serious injury to the opponent. For example, try rattlesnakes each other in Kommentkampf each other to press down, but rely their deadly fangs not one. Usually the fight is ended as soon as one of the two signals his inferiority and thus triggers an inhibition of aggression in the superior.
Comment battles can turn into corruption battles if the conflict cannot be resolved with a comment battle. This can be the case, for example, if both opponents are approximately equally strong.
The term comment fight is derived from the rules of conduct of the student associations called comment (from the French comment “how”, meaning “how one should behave”).
Examples
A well-known example of comment fights are the clashes between male red deer during the rutting season . A less well-known example of a specialized form of commentary fighting is the so-called mauling in hornets. Many species of snakes also show pronounced comment fighting behavior.
Game theory model
In theoretical biology , fighting behavior can be described as a mathematical model from game theory :
In the following, the total size of the population under consideration is n and the possible gains are normalized to the neutral value 1 . Entered in a profit matrix from the point of view of the animal represented in the first column, the following picture emerges:
| Damage battle | Comment fight | |
|---|---|---|
| Damage battle | 1 damage (d) | Win 2 |
| Comment fight | No profit | Profit 1 |
If one denotes the expected profit of comment fighters with and that of damage fighters with , then for m comment fighters and mn damage fighters results with the above matrix:
Such a static model can be the starting point for a dynamic formulation.
See also
literature
- J. Hofbauer, K. Sigmund: The theory of evolution and dynamical systems. Cambridge 1988
- Claus Peter Ortlieb: Dynamic Models in the Life and Social Sciences. Section 2.10.1: Comment and damage battles. (PDF, 816 kB)