Dataset Information

The life history of human foraging: Cross-cultural and individual variation.

ABSTRACT: Human adaptation depends on the integration of slow life history, complex production skills, and extensive sociality. Refining and testing models of the evolution of human life history and cultural learning benefit from increasingly accurate measurement of knowledge, skills, and rates of production with age. We pursue this goal by inferring hunters' increases and declines of skill from approximately 23,000 hunting records generated by more than 1800 individuals at 40 locations. The data reveal an average age of peak productivity between 30 and 35 years of age, although high skill is maintained throughout much of adulthood. In addition, there is substantial variation both among individuals and sites. Within study sites, variation among individuals depends more on heterogeneity in rates of decline than in rates of increase. This analysis sharpens questions about the coevolution of human life history and cultural adaptation.

SUBMITTER: Koster J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7314517 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The life history of human foraging: Cross-cultural and individual variation.

Koster Jeremy J McElreath Richard R Hill Kim K Yu Douglas D Shepard Glenn G van Vliet Nathalie N Gurven Michael M Trumble Benjamin B Bird Rebecca Bliege RB Bird Douglas D Codding Brian B Coad Lauren L Pacheco-Cobos Luis L Winterhalder Bruce B Lupo Karen K Schmitt Dave D Sillitoe Paul P Franzen Margaret M Alvard Michael M Venkataraman Vivek V Kraft Thomas T Endicott Kirk K Beckerman Stephen S Marks Stuart A SA Headland Thomas T Pangau-Adam Margaretha M Siren Anders A Kramer Karen K Greaves Russell R Reyes-García Victoria V Guèze Maximilien M Duda Romain R Fernández-Llamazares Álvaro Á Gallois Sandrine S Napitupulu Lucentezza L Ellen Roy R Ziker John J Nielsen Martin R MR Ready Elspeth E Healey Christopher C Ross Cody C

Science advances 20200624 26

Human adaptation depends on the integration of slow life history, complex production skills, and extensive sociality. Refining and testing models of the evolution of human life history and cultural learning benefit from increasingly accurate measurement of knowledge, skills, and rates of production with age. We pursue this goal by inferring hunters' increases and declines of skill from approximately 23,000 hunting records generated by more than 1800 individuals at 40 locations. The data reveal a ...[more]

PMID: 32637588

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Project description:We tested whether the early-life environment can influence the extent of individual plasticity in a life-history trait. We asked: can the early-life environment explain why, in response to the same adult environmental cue, some individuals invest more than others in current reproduction? Moreover, can it additionally explain why investment in current reproduction trades off against survival in some individuals, but is positively correlated with survival in others? We addressed these questions using the burying beetle, which breeds on small carcasses and sometimes carries phoretic mites. These mites breed alongside the beetle, on the same resource, and are a key component of the beetle's early-life environment. We exposed female beetles to mites twice during their lives: during their development as larvae and again as adults during their first reproductive event. We measured investment in current reproduction by quantifying average larval mass and recorded the female's life span after breeding to quantify survival. We found no effect of either developing or breeding alongside mites on female reproductive investment, nor on her life span, nor did developing alongside mites influence her size. In post hoc analyses, where we considered the effect of mite number (rather than their mere presence/absence) during the female's adult breeding event, we found that females invested more in current reproduction when exposed to greater mite densities during reproduction, but only if they had been exposed to mites during development as well. Otherwise, they invested less in larvae at greater mite densities. Furthermore, females that had developed with mites exhibited a trade-off between investment in current reproduction and future survival, whereas these traits were positively correlated in females that had developed without mites. The early-life environment thus generates individual variation in life-history plasticity. We discuss whether this is because mites influence the resources available to developing young or serve as important environmental cues.

Dataset Information

The life history of human foraging: Cross-cultural and individual variation.

Publications

The life history of human foraging: Cross-cultural and individual variation.

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