Food-Sharing Networks in Lamalera, Indonesia: Status, Sharing, and Signaling.

ABSTRACT: Costly signaling has been proposed as a possible mechanism to explain food sharing in foraging populations. This sharing-as-signaling hypothesis predicts an association between sharing and status. Using exponential random graph modeling (ERGM), this prediction is tested on a social network of between-household food-sharing relationships in the fishing and sea-hunting village of Lamalera, Indonesia. Previous analyses (Nolin 2010) have shown that most sharing in Lamalera is consistent with reciprocal altruism. The question addressed here is whether any additional variation may be explained as sharing-as-signaling by high-status households. The results show that high-status households both give and receive more than other households, a pattern more consistent with reciprocal altruism than cos

SUBMITTER: Nolin DA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3398706 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature