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Fighting Walnut Flies:
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Fighting Walnut Flies: Sequential Assessment

Let's summarize what we've covered:

  • Many animals use behavioral displays to communicate information during contests.
  • It is thought that such displays evolve as a way of determining the outcome of a contest without the high costs of actual fighting.
  • "Sequential assessment" is a series of escalating, increasingly-costly displays that function to determine the winner when opponents seem to be equally matched.
  • In Game Theory, "sequential assessment" is a variant of the "Hawk-Dove" game. In this variant, contestants are not equally matched (the match is asymmetrical) and the contestants signal their fighting ability to each other.
  • Display signals are often costly to produce (although not as costly as a fight), and because of this, "honest signaling" is the rule.

Links:

Game-theory web sites.

Web sites with info on threat displays, sequential assessment, and honest signaling.

End of Fighting Walnut Flies: Sequential Assessment

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