Studies of animal contests often focus solely on a single static measurement of fighting ability, such as the size or the strength of the individual. However, recent studies have highlighted the importance of individual variation in the dynamic behaviors used during a fight, such as, assessment strategies, decision making, and fine motor control, as being strong predictors of the outcome of aggression. Here, I combined morphological and behavioral data to discover how these features interact during aggressing interactions in male virile crayfish, Faxonius virilis. I predicted that individual variation in behavioral skill for decision making (i.e., number of strikes thrown), would determine the outcome of contest success in addition to morphological measurements (e.g. body size, relative claw size). To evaluate this prediction, I filmed staged territorial interactions between male F. virilis and later analyzed trial behaviors (e.g. strike, pinches, and bout time) and aggressive outcomes. I found very little support for skill to predict win/loss outcome in trials. Instead, I found that larger crayfish engaged in aggression for longer compared to smaller crayfish, but that larger crayfish did not engage in a greater number of claw strikes or pinches when controlling for encounter duration. Future studies should continue to investigate the role of skill, by using finer-scale techniques such as 3D tracking software, which could track advanced measurements (e.g. speed, angle, and movement efficiency). Such studies would provide a more comprehensive understanding of the relative influence of fighting skill technique on territorial contests.
When examining the medical doctrines of previous empires, they reveal the influence of religion, societal attitudes, and the historical context that influenced the scholars that penned them. The advancements during the Islamic Golden age can be seen in the field of medicine, which had the Greco-Roman medical corpus as their foundation and the source of the theory of the four humors and anatomical beliefs. This paper will analyze the effect of cultural, societal, and historical influences on the medical doctrines of Muslim medieval physicians in the Golden Age and the works of the Roman physician Galen, and demonstrate how these effects result in similarities and differences in medical practice and the understanding of disease and anatomy. Due to translation efforts that were supported by religious views on the accumulation of knowledge and the efforts of the Abbasid empire, resultant acceptance of the theory of the four humors and anatomical doctrines is observed in the treatment and perception of disease, which would consist of this paper's focus on surgery, diet therapy and associations with nature. However, with further analysis of the extent of this acceptance and the findings in the Islamic medical doctrines, the differences in experimental methods, religious interpretations, and cultural attitudes shows a deviation from the Galenic tradition, with the second set of the paper's focus being human dissection, cause of disease, and experimentation. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the impact of religion, societal attitudes, culture and the accepted paradigm on the practice of medicine and the study of anatomy, and what would cause a challenge against the legacy of Galen.