Temporal dynamics of social hierarchy formation and maintenance in male mice

Dominance hierarchies emerge when individuals must compete for access to resources such as food, territory or mates. Here, using traditional and network social hierarchy analysis, we show that 10 groups of 12 male laboratory CD1 mice living in large vivaria consistently form extremely linear dominan...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Animal behaviour 2016-05, Vol.115, p.259-272
Main Authors: Williamson, Cait M., Lee, Won, Curley, James P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal behavior
Behavioral biology
Comparative analysis
Rodents
social dominance
social dynamics
social hierarchy
social network
social status
Statistical methods
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Summary:Dominance hierarchies emerge when individuals must compete for access to resources such as food, territory or mates. Here, using traditional and network social hierarchy analysis, we show that 10 groups of 12 male laboratory CD1 mice living in large vivaria consistently form extremely linear dominance hierarchies. Within each hierarchy we determine that every individual mouse has a unique social rank and behaves with a high degree of consistency in their agonistic behaviour towards other individuals. Using temporal pairwise comparison Glicko ratings and social network triangle transitivity measures, we demonstrate that these hierarchies emerge rapidly, and that initial aggression is not predictive of later dominance. We also show that groups vary in how unequally power is distributed over time as social networks stabilize. Our results demonstrate that an ethologically relevant housing paradigm coupled with extensive behavioural observations provides a strong framework for investigating the temporal patterning of mouse dominance hierarchies and complex social dynamics. Furthermore, the statistical methods described establish a strong basis for the study of temporal dynamics of social hierarchies across species. •We describe a novel paradigm to study the temporal dynamics of mouse dominance hierarchies.•Mice reliably form significantly linear and stable dominance hierarchies.•Each mouse has a unique social rank suggestive of high sociocognitive competence.•Alpha males vary in the degree of despotism.•We use advanced statistical methods for the analysis of complex social behaviour.
ISSN:0003-3472
1095-8282
DOI:10.1016/j.anbehav.2016.03.004