Investigating trade-offs in Strength, Skill and Vigour in Pagurus Bernhardus

Abstract

The ability to win contests is vital for securing the valuable resources individuals need for survival, or in some cases to secure mating opportunities. Therefore, fighting can have a strong influence over fitness, and much research has been carried out to identify and understand the traits influencing fighting ability, also known as resource holding potential (RHP). RHP has been found to be influenced by a wide range of factors including morphology, physiology, vigour and, more recently, skill. These factors are typically analysed in isolation from one another, so as to identify the individual impact of each trait. However, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of RHP we would benefit from identifying how these different traits potentially interact and trade-off with one another to determine overall RHP. Strength is relatively under-researched in the context of fighting, therefore we know very little about how it affects fighting behaviour or other RHP traits. Using the European hermit crab Pagurus bernhardus, we investigated the relationship between three RHP traits: strength, vigour and skill. We identified a potential trade-off between strength and skill, indicating that individuals might have to choose between different agonistic strategies. In contrast, vigour appears to be unrelated to strength, suggesting that the two factors are influenced by independent sets of traits. The near universal investment in vigorous fighting amongst the majority ofindividuals, while strength and skill appear to trade-off (perhaps in competition for limited energetic budget) implies that some RHP traits might be considered more important than others and thus receive greater investment. We may have also identified a potential measure of efficiency, that being gripping style, where some individuals appear to apply their strength in shorter bursts of force, which might better suit fighting which involves brief periods of agonistic behaviour, and prolonged rests. In conclusion, our results indicate that there are numerous complex links between different RHP traits which in some cases force trade offs. Therefore, we should make attempts to study fighting behaviour more holistically, if possible, rather than considering them each in isolation.

Keywords

Animal Behaviour

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Date

2024

Embargo Period

2025-06-15

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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This item is under embargo until 15 June 2025

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