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      The outcomes of most aggressive interactions among closely related bird species are asymmetric

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          Abstract

          Aggressive interactions among closely related species are common, and can play an important role as a selective pressure shaping species traits and assemblages. The nature of this selective pressure depends on whether the outcomes of aggressive contests are asymmetric between species (i.e., one species is consistently dominant), yet few studies have estimated the prevalence of asymmetric versus symmetric outcomes to aggressive contests. Here we use previously published data involving 26,212 interactions between 270 species pairs of birds from 26 taxonomic families to address the question: How often are aggressive interactions among closely related bird species asymmetric? We define asymmetry using (i) the proportion of contests won by one species, and (ii) statistical tests for asymmetric outcomes of aggressive contests. We calculate these asymmetries using data summed across different sites for each species pair, and compare results to asymmetries calculated using data separated by location. We find that 80% of species pairs had aggressive outcomes where one species won 80% or more of aggressive contests. We also find that the majority of aggressive interactions among closely related species show statistically significant asymmetries, and above a sample size of 52 interactions, all outcomes are asymmetric following binomial tests. Species pairs with dominance data from multiple sites showed the same dominance relationship across locations in 93% of the species pairs. Overall, our results suggest that the outcome of aggressive interactions among closely related species are usually consistent and asymmetric, and should thus favor ecological and evolutionary strategies specific to the position of a species within a dominance hierarchy.

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          Predation, apparent competition, and the structure of prey communities

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            A framework for community interactions under climate change.

            Predicting the impacts of climate change on species is one of the biggest challenges that ecologists face. Predictions routinely focus on the direct effects of climate change on individual species, yet interactions between species can strongly influence how climate change affects organisms at every scale by altering their individual fitness, geographic ranges and the structure and dynamics of their community. Failure to incorporate these interactions limits the ability to predict responses of species to climate change. We propose a framework based on ideas from global-change biology, community ecology, and invasion biology that uses community modules to assess how species interactions shape responses to climate change. Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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              Interspecific Killing among Mammalian Carnivores

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                PeerJ
                PeerJ
                peerj
                peerj
                PeerJ
                PeerJ Inc. (San Francisco, USA )
                2167-8359
                4 January 2017
                2017
                : 5
                : e2847
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Biology, Queen’s University , Kingston, Ontario, Canada
                [2 ]Department of Biology, University of Victoria , Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
                [3 ]Department of Biology and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University , Fort Collins, Colorado, United States
                Article
                2847
                10.7717/peerj.2847
                5217525
                28070465
                a4544449-96c2-4586-ac69-af0dc545a205
                ©2017 Martin et al.

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.

                History
                : 28 September 2016
                : 30 November 2016
                Funding
                Funded by: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
                Funded by: National Science Foundation
                Award ID: IOS-1457383
                Funding to support this work was provided by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant to Paul R. Martin and a National Science Foundation grant IOS-1457383 to Cameron Ghalambor. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Animal Behavior
                Ecology
                Evolutionary Studies
                Zoology

                interspecific competition,interspecific aggression,species interactions,community ecology,social dominance,community structure,dominance hierarchy

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