Uniformly distributed resources make territorial weapons uneconomical

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

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Hostile zones are surveilled and exploited but never occupied or settled; Arms races inevitably stall as weapon costs neutralize reproductive benefits — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 432; Weapons disappear when fights stop being duels over defensible resources (+11 more)

Related

• Clumped scarce resources make guarding territories economically worthwhile (similarity 0.90)
• Evenly distributed food resources make territorial fighting economically wasteful (similarity 0.90)
• Weapons evolve only when reproductive benefits exceed costs (similarity 0.86)
• Clumped sparse resources make territorial fighting pay off reproductively (similarity 0.86)
• Weapons disappear when fights stop being duels over defensible resources (similarity 0.84)
• Weapon evolution needs both competition and economically defensible resources (similarity 0.84)
• Force superiority within a territory requires organized mobilization of resources (similarity 0.83)
• Resource value and defensibility are relative to each species’ perspective (similarity 0.83)
• Weapon expense is what keeps signals of fighting ability honest (similarity 0.81)
• Mobile resources deny weapons a cost-effective performance advantage (similarity 0.81)
• Specific ecological circumstances must align before weapon arms races begin (similarity 0.81)
• Weapon size should track resource availability more than any mandatory body part (similarity 0.81)
• Mobility and concealment made Cold War missile platforms near impossible to target (similarity 0.81)
• Losing the ecological context of competition can make extreme weapons vanish. (similarity 0.80)
• Rare localized resources translate fighting success into reproductive success (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Mobile resources deny weapons a cost-effective performance advantage #corroborates (0.75) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 225
• Weapons evolve only when reproductive benefits exceed costs #expands (0.70) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 199