A female‐dominated feeding hierarchy in juvenilesepia officinal isin the laboratory

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Abstract
Ten juvenile Sepia officinalis were observed during feeding, as two five‐member groups, to look for possible dominance relationships during feeding. Three measures of feeding, number of shrimp prey eaten, priority to take prey and access priority over another individual, were measured. After ten days the ten animals were grouped differently and the study was repeated. Priority of access and priority to eat were significantly related, r = 0.67 and 0.78. However, of the other four correlations, only one was significant with this group size, suggesting a weak relationship between ability to gain access to food and actual intake. When animals’ overall rankings given the two different groupings were correlated, the relationship was very high (r = 0.96). Female Sepia tended to dominate males and larger females tended to dominate smaller ones (r = 0.58). Thus juvenile Sepia have the capacity to form dominance relationships within a feeding situation.