Understanding Animal Aggression: Mechanisms, Context, and Consequences Across Species

Animal aggression is a widespread behavioral strategy used to acquire and defend resources, negotiate social relationships, protect offspring, and reduce uncertainty in competitive environments. While aggression can appear overtly harmful, it often functions as a regulated, context-dependent suite of actions shaped by evolution, development, and immediate ecological pressures. Notably, recent work shows that aggressive behavior is also influenced by the presence of bystanders (i.e., audiences), suggesting a role for social awareness and context-dependent signaling during conflicts. Advances in biologging, automated behavioral tracking, and computational ethology now allow fine-scale quantification of escalation, timing, and dyadic dynamics, while neuroendocrine and genomic tools reveal mechanisms linking internal state to behavior. Yet aggression remains difficult to compare across taxa because it is expressed through diverse signals and movements, and because it is strongly modulated by social history, environment, and interactions with humans. A cohesive framework is needed to better connect mechanisms to function and outcomes.This Research Topic aims to advance our understanding of animal aggression across species, contexts, and levels of organization. A central challenge is distinguishing adaptive aggression from maladaptive or pathology-like patterns, particularly under rapid environmental change, captivity, urbanization, and shifting social structures. We invite contributions that clarify how aggression emerges from interactions among ecological constraints, social networks, cognitive processes, ontogeny, and internal physiology, and how it translates into fitness, health, and welfare outcomes.We welcome laboratory, field, and applied studies across vertebrates and invertebrates. Authors should clearly define aggression metrics, context, and ethical considerations. Suitable themes include:• Escalation and de-escalation rules, contest theory, and assessment strategies• Dominance, social hierarchy formation, and network effects• Communication and signaling during conflict (visual, acoustic, chemical)• Neuroendocrine and physiological mechanisms (e.g., hormones, stress reactivity, energetics)• Developmental and learning processes shaping aggressive phenotypes• Individual differences, sex differences, and life-history trade-offs• Comparative and cross-species measurement frameworks, including automated tracking and machine learning• Human-animal conflict, coexistence, and aggression in shared landscapes• Human-driven change, welfare, and management implications• Audience effects and third-party influences on aggressive interactions• Strategic signaling and communication in social contexts of conflict Topic editors: Fredy Quintero, Michael Potegal Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85361/understanding-animal-aggression-mechanisms-context-and-consequences-across-species