Word.ws English Dictionary

gamma female

gamma female noun: a female who is third in rank in the social hierarchy, beneath alphas and betas, but above deltas.

Noun

gamma female (plural gamma females)

  1. A female who is third in rank in the social hierarchy, beneath alphas and betas, but above deltas.
    • The alpha female attacked swollen females, the beta female attacked deflating females, the gamma female attacked both inflating and deflating females, but neither beta nor gamma female attacked swollen females, perhaps because of their proximity to the male (Rowell, 1969a).1972, Advances in the Study of Behavior, page 97
    • The subordinate females continued to lay, and the gamma female in the end laid more eggs than the alpha female, as if trying to compensate for for^([sic]) the lost eggs.1976, Sandra Lee Vehrencamp, The Evolution of Communal Nesting in Groove-billed Anis, page 51

Examples of gamma female in a sentence

  • The gamma female moves up to pair with the newly divorced beta male.1998, Thomas C. Grubb, Tufted Titmouse, page 40:
  • This changed dramatically when we introduced the gamma female Mecki together with her two children (2.8).2012, A.B. Chiarelli, Robert Corruccini, Primate Behavior and Sociobiology, page 98:

Forms of gamma female

pluralgamma females

Questions about gamma female

What does gamma female mean?
Gamma female means a female who is third in rank in the social hierarchy, beneath alphas and betas, but above deltas.
How do you use gamma female in a sentence?
The gamma female moves up to pair with the newly divorced beta male.
What part of speech is gamma female?
Gamma female is a noun.
What is the plural of gamma female?
The plural of gamma female is gamma females.

Words near gamma female in the dictionary

  1. gamma decay
  2. gamma decays
  3. gamma distribution
  4. gamma distributions
  5. gamma encephalography
  6. gamma female
  7. gamma females
  8. gamma function
  9. gamma functions
  10. gamma garden
  11. gamma globulin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gamma female (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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