When animals live in long-term groups, the potential for conflict is high. Conflict is costly, so an individual’s decision to engage depends on the information it has about the costs and benefits of fighting. One source of information could be past contest experience, where previous winners/losers typically become more likely to win/lose in the future. However, repeated interactions can familiarize individuals with conflict and provide opportunities to learn to become better fighters, regardless of outcome. We explored how individuals integrate information from previous contests to inform future encounters in a group-living fish, Neolamprologus pulcher. We gave contestants single, reinforcing, and contradictory experiences and measured behavior and post-fight water-borne levels of androgenic steroids (testosterone, 11-ketotestosterone). Contradictory outcomes were associated with reduced investment in fighting. More fighting experience did not lead to greater investment in fighting, as consecutive losses resulted in reduced aggression. Also, there was no effect of fighting treatment on water-borne androgen concentrations. Interestingly, there were sex differences in which behaviors were influenced by experience, and in whether body mass was associated with androgen concentrations, which could indicate that males and females vary in how perceived fighting ability changes with contest experience. Our data reveal the complex ways in which repeated experiences can alter an individual’s propensity to invest in conflict. Repeated interactions associated with predictable changes in behavior can contribute to rank stability in groups and our results indicate that whether and how they do depend on the quality and quantity of interactions plus individual factors such as sex.

中文翻译：

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累积经验影响社交鱼的竞赛投资

当动物长期生活在群体中时，发生冲突的可能性就很大。冲突代价高昂，因此个人参与冲突的决定取决于其所掌握的有关战斗成本和收益的信息。信息来源之一可能是过去的比赛经验，以前的获胜者/失败者通常更有可能在未来获胜/失败。然而，反复的互动可以让个人熟悉冲突，并提供学习成为更好的战士的机会，无论结果如何。我们探索了个体如何整合之前比赛中的信息，为未来在群居鱼类 Neolamprologus pulcher 中的遭遇提供信息。我们为参赛者提供了单一的、强化的、矛盾的体验，并测量了他们的行为和赛后水中雄激素类固醇（睾酮、11-酮睾酮）的水平。矛盾的结果与战斗投入的减少有关。更多的战斗经验并不会导致更多的战斗投入，因为连续的失败会导致攻击性的减少。此外，抗击治疗对水中雄激素浓度没有影响。有趣的是，行为受经验影响的性别差异，以及体重是否与雄激素浓度相关，这可能表明男性和女性在感知战斗能力随比赛经验的变化方面存在差异。我们的数据揭示了重复的经历可以以复杂的方式改变个人投入冲突的倾向。