Finding an appropriate order for a hierarchy: a comparison of the I&SI and the BBS methods.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Journal Article↗
Biomedical subjects
MC Appleby
Publications and source records attributed to MC Appleby.
Finding an appropriate order for a hierarchy based on probabilistic dominance.
Methods of ranking individuals in a dominance hierarchy that use transitivity of relationships may obscure irregularities. Furthermore, these methods use only a small proportion of the information available from dominance encounters. This paper presents an intuitively appealing and easily implemented alternative to existing methods for ordering dominance data, developed from the work of Batchelder et al. (1992 Journal of Mathematical Psychology36, 185-212). The procedure presented here is based on a mathematical model of paired comparisons and it involves only simple estimation procedures. We illustrate its use with data on dominance among red deer Cervus elaphus, stags. The results indicate that dominance relationships are well characterized by the scale values that the model provides, and, because the method provides predictions for all pairings of animals, dominance predictions also exist for pairs of animals that have yet to be observed. Moreover, the dominance outcomes predicted by the model using the order scale are highly correlated with actual dominance observations at all levels. Overall, the procedure described provides a solution to the problem of identifying an appropriate order for a near-linear dominance hierarchy. Copyright 1999 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
Journal Article↗
Assessment of pre-laying motivation in the domestic hen using social interaction
While much is known about the hormonal basis of pre-laying behaviour of domestic hens, Gallus gallus domesticuslittle is known about how the behaviour is initiated or how changes in this behaviour occur. An experiment was conducted in which hens had to overcome an aversive task, during the course of pre-laying behaviour, in order to reach a nest site. Twelve hens were tested in four treatments presented as a Latin square design. The test arena was arranged such that hens could approach the nestbox only along one corridor, and return to the home pen by another. The four treatments consisted of leaving the corridor leading to the nestbox empty, or placing a hen that was dominant, subordinate or unfamiliar to the test-bird in it. Hens took longer to enter the corridor leading to the nestbox when there was a dominant or unfamiliar stimulus-bird than with a subordinate or an empty corridor. They also made more attempts to find alternative routes to the nestbox during the searching phase of pre-laying behaviour when there was a dominant or unfamiliar stimulus-bird, than with a subordinate stimulus-bird or empty pen and made fewer entries into the corridor with an unfamiliar stimulus-bird, but not a dominant or subordinate stimulus-bird or an empty pen. We suggest that hens are weakly motivated to reach the nest site during the searching phase. However, the motivation to gain access to a nest site increases near the start of the sitting phase of pre-laying behaviour.
Journal Article↗
Motivational aspects of individual variation in response to nestboxes by laying hens
Laying hens, Gallus gallus domesticusshow individual variation in pre-laying behaviour including their ultimate choice of nest site. In housing systems with nestboxes, the majority of hens make a small number of long visits to nestboxes and lay their eggs therein, but some hens make many short visits and occasionally lay outside the nestbox. We investigated the motivational basis of this individual variation using six consistent hens which always laid in nestboxes and six inconsistent hens which sometimes laid outside nestboxes. Each hen was housed in a pen (containing either no nestbox, a semi-enclosed nestbox or an enclosed nestbox) with access to a ring-shaped tunnel which increased the opportunity to perform locomotor activity. Access to the tunnel could be restricted by narrowing the doorway to 140, 125, 110 or 95 mm (compared with a mean hen width of 114 mm). In trials with no nestbox, there was no difference in the pre-laying behaviour of consistent and inconsistent hens. Narrowing the doorway reduced the number of visits to the tunnel, but all hens persisted in visiting the tunnel and doorwidth had no effect on time spent therein. With both designs of nestbox, however, inconsistent hens visited the tunnel more often than consistent hens prior to oviposition, and continued to pass the narrowest doors to enter the tunnel, whilst consistent hens would not pass doors of 110 or 95 mm. After oviposition, there was no difference in the two groups' behaviour in any treatment and no hens would pass doors of either 110 or 95 mm to visit the tunnel. Individual variation in nest-site choice, therefore, appeared to result from different perception of nestboxes rather than lower nesting motivation. Inconsistent hens worked as hard as consistent hens to perform pre-laying locomotion, but appeared to be less responsive to the cues provided by nestboxes than consistent hens, because they persisted with pre-laying locomotion when provided with either design of nestbox.Copyright 1997 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour1997The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour
Journal Article↗