Meeting Abstract
Submissive behaviour serves to signal acquiescence to a dominant individual, thereby avoiding further conflict. Despite its important role in agonistic interactions, submissive behaviour has received scant research attention compared to the vast literature on aggression. In the current paper, I highlight the importance of submissive signals. In particular, I emphasize the value of submissive behaviour in reducing the costs of aggression for both winners and losers during agonistic interactions, thereby mitigating the costs of social conflict. I argue that submission has a place of particular importance in the behavioural repertoire of gregarious species, which must regularly interact with conspecifics. Frequent interactions have the potential to lead to recurring conflict, which could obviate the benefits of group living. Furthermore, social species must settle disputes while remaining in the same spatial area, thereby restricting the ability for the loser to flee, which may further incentivize the use of submissive behaviour. As a result, submissive signals are likely a key building block of animal sociality. I discuss the relationship between submission and sociality using recent experimental data collected on the cooperatively breeding cichlid fish, Neolamprologus pulcher.
