 Some animals may assess rivals through specific characteristics that are relevant to their fighting abilities ; however , some animals , instead , use conventional characteristics to determine the competitive ability of their rivals . Conventional characteristics are signals that are indicative of the rival ’ s abilities but are not a reflection of the animal ’ s physiological or physical agonistic abilities . Polistes exclamans uses facial patterns as a conventional characteristic to determine the agonistic abilities of competitive rivals . Larger wasps have a greater amount of brown pigmented clypei . Wasps use these pigmented clypei to determine the viability of challenging a rival . The more pigmented the clypei or the larger the Polistes exclamans , the more likely the Polistes exclamans will be willing to challenge a rival . The less pigmented the clypei or the smaller the Polistes exclamans , the less willing it would be to challenge a rival . This assists in the minimization of the “ costs of conflict during dominance competition among nest @-@ founding queens . ” 
