title: Status signaling games in animal contests.
abstract: This paper provides evolutionary game-theoretic models for the status signaling problem in animal contests. Two stage status signaling game models are introduced and evolutionarily stable strategies and their modifications are characterized for the games. It is shown that in the stable long-run equilibria, animals must make use of signals systematically to settle the contest peacefully.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D005075:Biological Evolution; D005716:Game Theory; D008433:Mathematics; D008954:Models, Biological