DomArchive: a century of published dominance data

Abstract

Dominance behaviours have been collected for many groups of animals since 1922 and serve as a foundation for research on social behaviour and social structure. Despite a wealth of data from the last century of research on dominance hierarchies, these data are only rarely used for comparative insight. Here, we aim to facilitate comparative studies of the structure and function of dominance hierarchies by compiling published dominance interaction datasets from the last 100 years of work. This compiled archive includes 436 datasets from 190 studies of 367 unique groups (mean group size 13.8, s.d. = 13.4) of 135 different species, totalling over 243 000 interactions. These data are presented in an R package alongside relevant metadata and a tool for subsetting the archive based on biological or methodological criteria. In this paper, we explain how to use the archive, discuss potential limitations of the data, and reflect on best practices in publishing dominance data based on our experience in assembling this dataset. This archive will serve as an important resource for future comparative studies and will promote the development of general unifying theories of dominance in behavioural ecology that can be grounded in testing with empirical data. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.

The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies

“…A few cross-cutting themes emerge from the contributions to this theme issue as vibrant areas of ongoing or future progress, supporting the suggestion by Hobson [5] that we may be entering a more cross-disciplinary phase in the study of dominance hierarchies. Many contributions highlight the rapid development of advanced quantitative tools for social network analysis as playing an important role in driving new insight into the structure and function of dominance hierarchies (Tibbetts et al [67] and Dehnen et al [75]), comparative approaches (Strauss et al [22]), theoretical frameworks (Lewis [69], Zeng et al [24] and Strauss & Shizuka [78]) and modelling (Hamilton & Benincasa [76]), the theme issue highlights how research into dominance hierarchies uses the full breadth of tools available to modern biologists.…”

“…[ 75 ]), comparative approaches (Strauss et al . [ 22 ]), theoretical frameworks (Lewis [ 69 ], Zeng et al . [ 24 ] and Strauss & Shizuka [ 78 ]) and modelling (Hamilton & Benincasa [ 76 ]), the theme issue highlights how research into dominance hierarchies uses the full breadth of tools available to modern biologists.…”

“…Finally, the spread of dominance research over the last century has produced a bounty of data on dominance interactions across species, providing the opportunity for comparative research into the evolution of this widespread social structure [21,[40][41][42]. To facilitate future comparative approaches to dominance hierarchy research, Strauss et al [22] collect published dominance interaction data from the last century and share this archive in a freely available R package, DomArchive. The authors also reflect on best practices for sharing dominance interaction data moving forward to empower continued comparative insight founded on principles of open science.…”

“…Considerable research has now clearly demonstrated that these dominance hierarchies are a widespread feature of societies occurring broadly across the evolutionary tree ([ 20 , 21 ]; see also Strauss et al . [ 22 ] in this theme issue) including humans (see Redhead & Power [ 23 ] and Zeng et al [ 24 ] in this theme issue).…”

“…To facilitate future comparative approaches to dominance hierarchy research, Strauss et al . [ 22 ] collect published dominance interaction data from the last century and share this archive in a freely available R package, DomArchive . The authors also reflect on best practices for sharing dominance interaction data moving forward to empower continued comparative insight founded on principles of open science.…”