Dyadic interactions: Estimating Uncertainty in Dominance
Hierarchy
The total number of interactions among the ten species was 258
interactions. The ratio of interaction to individuals (25.8) shows an
adequate sampling effort beyond the 10-20 recommended range
(Sánchez‐Tójar et al. 2017). Using the randomized Elo-rating method, we
found that the shape of the hierarchy was intermediate in its steepness
showing that rank in the hierarchy largely predicts the probability of
winning an interaction (Fig 1). We quantify this by using the Elo-rating
repeatability and found a steepness of 0.938.
We further estimated the uncertainty in the hierarchy by splitting the
database into two, and estimating whether hierarchy from one half
resembles the hierarchy estimated from the other half. We find that the
degree of uncertainty/steepness in the hierarchy is intermediate
(mean=0.76, 2.5 % and 97.5% quantile = (0.50,0.94)).