Evenly distributed food resources make territorial fighting economically wasteful

Evidence

Imagine a food resource spread out uniformly across a landscape—grass, if you’re a grazer, extending as far as the eye can see. As a male, where would you stand guard? Even if it were absolutely necessary for females to visit places with grass to feed, and even if they were willing to mate with you if you happened to be there when they fed, where would that location be? For food resources broadly distributed in space, there is no obvious location that is better than any other. It would be impossible for a male to anticipate where females were likely to visit since they could find their food anywhere. A male could still invest in the production of weapons, and he could use his weapons to deflect rivals from a patch of turf. But why should he bother to guard one particular area if all of the surrounding areas are just as good? And why should he pay the price of producing a weapon and fighting, if other males without weapons or territories do just as well as he does? In the parlance of economists, such behavior would not be cost-effective. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 201 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The worthless chip which is often contested as passionately as is a gold piece suggests the formal nature of this impulse, which even in the quarrel over gold often greatly exceeds any material interest. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 299 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Clumped sparse resources make territorial fighting pay off reproductively; Uniformly distributed resources make territorial weapons uneconomical — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 201; Clumped scarce resources make guarding territories economically worthwhile — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 202 (+3 more)

Related

• Clumped scarce resources make guarding territories economically worthwhile (similarity 0.91)
• Uniformly distributed resources make territorial weapons uneconomical (similarity 0.90)
• Clumped sparse resources make territorial fighting pay off reproductively (similarity 0.86)
• Weapons disappear when fights stop being duels over defensible resources (similarity 0.82)
• Weapon evolution needs both competition and economically defensible resources (similarity 0.80)
• Resource value and defensibility are relative to each species’ perspective (similarity 0.80)
• Weapon expense is what keeps signals of fighting ability honest (similarity 0.80)
• Force superiority within a territory requires organized mobilization of resources (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Uniformly distributed resources make territorial weapons uneconomical #corroborates (0.90) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 201
• Clumped sparse resources make territorial fighting pay off reproductively #corroborates (0.85)
• Clumped scarce resources make guarding territories economically worthwhile #corroborates (0.85) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 202
• Fights over worthless chips reveal that fighting itself motivates conflict #corroborates (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 299
• Rare localized resources translate fighting success into reproductive success #corroborates (0.80) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 217
• Weapon evolution needs both competition and economically defensible resources #expands (0.75) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 191