Don’t Come Around Here no More: Sequential Hawk-Dove with a Female-Absent Contest

Abstract While searching over large territories, solitary males find a potential mating location and encounter a rival there. This paper presents an evolutionary game with a sequence of moves that precede an ultimate hawk-dove subgame. First, the rival males face a choice between being aggressive (hawk) or passive (dove) when encountering each other before the female is present, and subsequently, each chooses whether or not to return for the ultimate hawk-dove subgame during mating season. Depending on the travel costs of returning to the location, there exist neutrally stable behavioral strategies (NSS) assigning different probability of aggression at the initial female-absent encounter than at the ultimate contest. Initial randomization over hawk-dove may facilitate partial coordination of the decisions to return to the mating spot. A male’s probability of returning to the potential mating spot is conditional on the outcome of the initial hawk-dove contest. The neutrally stable strategies of interest are not robust against indirect invasions.