https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4795-6352
-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Geoff A Parker, So we all choose our own assessment rules?: a comment on Chapin et al, Behavioral Ecology, Volume 30, Issue 5, September/October 2019, Page 1188, https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arz120
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
In the 1970s, contest theory heralded the start of evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) approaches in evolutionary biology and of assessment strategy theory in animal combats. The excellent monograph edited by Hardy and Briffa (2013) outlines the many developments since then. Four variables are potentially important in determining decisions in a dyadic contest: each opponent’s “resource holding potential” (RHP), a measure of absolute fighting ability (hence, how contest costs accrue), and its value V of the resource (Parker 1974). Earliest models assumed “mutual assessment”—that is, contestant’s decisions to continue or withdraw depend on their assessment of both self and opponent. My early paper (Parker 1974) proposed an “assessor rule”: if VA and VB are respective resource fitness benefits to contestants A and B, and cA and cB their contest fitness costs accrual rates, assessment would favor withdrawal by contestant B, characterized by VB/cB < VA/cA. This was later established as an ESS for the asymmetric war of attrition (Hammerstein and Parker 1982).
