We are running a project in which we would like to determine the dominance structure of our male giraffes. Currently we have 10 adult males in a population of 39 giraffes. They all live on a small fenced reserve and because of that, we observe many interactions between males. We record fighting/sparring events, but these are not always useful to determine dominance. We also record relative size between males. Is there a reliable method to determine the dominance hierarchy between male giraffes or large ungulates in general?
Although not related to ungulates, I carried out work on dominance hierarchies in social insects. It was published in Animal Behaviour in 2010, and I think you may find it interesting. The work was on comparing three most popular/relevant dominance indices and applying it to real data from wasps, and on artificial data sets. Read it here: http://repository.ias.ac.in/23713/1/335.pdf
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