Burning generally resulted in lowering the dominance of the A-H complex compared to the control while fertilizer application had variable effect, reducing the proportion of A-H with burning but increasing it without burning.
On the contrary, the Bofedal reported high equitability (0.78 ± 0.050) and lower dominance (0.082 ± 0.027).
When the plots were classified according to the ≥75 % species proportion, the most problematic case was the 'mixed' class including plots of lower dominance of the various species.
As hosts in the population gradually acquire immunity to individual dominance blocks, they remain susceptible only to parasites which express blocks of lower dominance (Fig. 1c).
Alongside this, these results suggest that older equines over 20 years of age are also likely to have a lower dominance rank, again potentially associated with a lower physiological and reproductive fitness.
This overlap may reflect differences in aggressive behavior between honey bee foragers and non-foragers [ 43], or perhaps be explained by the fact that lower dominance status in wasps is typically associated with increased foraging behavior [ 12].
We then asked whether genes within each category show concordance in the direction of effects across data sets (i.e., concordantly increased or concordantly decreased shifts with older age and lower dominance rank).
As body condition is likely to be closely related to reproductive fitness in horses and horses do not reach full size or sexual maturity until around five years of age (Goodwin, 2007), a lower dominance rank in immature animals might be expected.
Recent findings show that experimentally lowering D f elevates dominance ratings (Puts et al. 2007; Wolff and Puts 2010), and low D f is associated with assessments of larger size, muscularity, masculinity, and age (Collins 2000; Feinberg et al. 2005).
In addition, experimentally lowering F0 increases perceptions of dominance (Jones et al. 2010; Puts et al. 2007; Wolff and Puts 2010).
