Multiple Asymmetry and Concord Resolutions of a Conflict

✍ Scribed by ILAN ESHEL; EMILIA SANSONE

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 261 KB
• Volume: 213
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5193
• DOI: 10.1006/jtbi.2001.2412

✦ Synopsis

A model for a population-game with multiple asymmetry is studied, in which the participants are assumed to be di!erent from one another both in size and in status as owners or non-owners of a territory. Only owners can reproduce, hence natural selection is assumed to operate in favor of the increase of ownership-time. Conditions for the evolutionary stability of the Bourgeois Principle of owner-priority, despite di!erence in body size, are characterized. It is shown that ownership-priority tends to be at least partially replaced by strength-priority as the availability of habitats, the expected longevity of potential intruders and the harm in#icted on the loser of an aggressive confrontation decrease, and as the expected longevity of the owner increases. It is further established that the combined e!ect of all these parameters can be characterized by a single parameter, referred to as the concord coe$cient of the population. Finally, when this parameter reaches a certain critical level, only strength-priority can prevail. If the concord coe$cient decreases below this critical level, no priority-rule can remain stable in the population, in which case aggressive confrontations cannot be avoided, at least in certain situations. In this case, it is shown that aggression emerges "rst among low-rank individuals.