David's score: a more appropriate dominance ranking method than Clutton-Brock et al.'s index

here are many procedures, of varying complexity, forranking the members of a social group in a domi-nance hierarchy (reviewed by de Vries 1998; also Jamesonet al. 1999; de Vries & Appleby 2000; Albers & de Vries2001). Roughly, two types of method can be distin-guished, one in which the dominance matrix is reorgan-ized such that some numerical criterion, calculated forthe matrix as a whole, is minimized or maximized, andone that aims to provide a suitable measure of individualoverall success, from which a rank order can be directlyderived. Two relatively simple, and somewhat similar,ranking methods belonging to the latter type are Clutton-Brock et al.’s index (Clutton-Brock et al. 1979, 1982) andDavid’s score (David 1987, 1988). Both methods can beused to calculate dominance ranks for individuals in agroup, based on the outcomes of their agonistic inter-actions with other group members, while taking therelative strengths of their opponents into account.Clutton-Brock et al.’s index (CBI) was originally devel-oped as a measure of fighting success for red deer,