https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8382-4050
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Kenneth James Chapin, Paulo Enrique Cardoso Peixoto, Mark Briffa, The point of the triangle and utility of repeated measures: a response to comments on Chapin et al, Behavioral Ecology, Volume 30, Issue 5, September/October 2019, Pages 1191–1192, https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arz163
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We appreciate the diversity of commentaries on our recent review on animal contests (Chapin et al. 2019). Here we respond to some key points to highlight how our suggested approach could be used. In summary, we suggested that: 1) variation in information use might be continuous, in contrast to the usual mutual assessment versus self-assessment dichotomy, 2) individuals in a population might vary in how they use information, 3) if we include information about resource value that an individual has access to, we can represent these continua in a ternary plot. Finally, 4) we suggested an experimental design based on repeated fights that could reveal individual-level variation in information use.
Our central suggestion is that individual-level variation in contest assessment strategies might be present in wild populations. Given other contexts in which information use is known to vary across individuals, it seems entirely possible that the same might be true of contest behavior though empirical evidence is needed to test this idea. We agree that imperfect decision making may affect the assignment of individual-level assessment strategies (Elwood 2019). However, as we suggested, one could first test if there is individual-level variation in a population (Chapin et al. 2019) before proceeding with tests focused on individual strategies. In case individual-level assessment strategies are determined, additional tests, such as analysis of contest dynamics, may be carried out to establish if a given model (e.g., cumulative assessment, sequential assessment) explains how individuals make decisions during the contest.
