Susan Riechert

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  Maynard Smith & Parker's (1976) Rule Book for Animal Contests, Mostly
  Susan Riechert

  Maynard Smith & Parker' 1976 paper on asymmetric games offered animal behaviorists and behavioral ecologists a theoretical framework/guide to understanding animal behavior in competitive contexts. In this essay I trace the influence of this 'contest rule book' from the factors that led the two researchers to develop a treatise on the logic of the asymmetric game to empirical tests of the contest rules and theoretical additions made to the basic model and its underlying assumptions. Over a thousand studies cite this paper directly and thousands more cite work spurred by the original paper. The vast majority of these studies confirm the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) predictions made by Maynard Smith & Parker. Theoretical and empirical deviations from EES can largely be explained by the need for further structuring of the analyses into sub games and investigation of less obvious asymmetries than apparent size and resource value. To date, much progress has been made in three areas of interest to behaviorists: (1) understanding of the strategic nature of contests between conspecifics over limited resources; (2) modelling developments that deal with how information about potential asymmetries is gained; and (3) evaluation of the question of honest signaling with specific reference to threat displays. I propose suggestions for future work, much of which will either require collaboration with mathematicians, or require that students interested in animal behavior obtain a strong foundation in biomathematics. My preference is for the latter strategy.