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Cited by 290Evolutionary Psychology and Human BehaviorAnimal Behavior and ReproductionEvolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 61 of the 62 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Cooperative breeding in South American hunter–gatherers

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Hill, Kim, Hurtado, A. Magdalena·2009·Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
DOI 10.1098/rspb.2009.1061PMC PMC2817285
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Abstract

Evolutionary researchers have recently suggested that pre-modern human societies habitually practised cooperative breeding and that this feature helps explain human prosocial tendencies. Despite circumstantial evidence that post-reproductive females and extra-pair males both provide resources required for successful reproduction by mated pairs, no study has yet provided details about the flow of food resources by different age and sex categories to breeders and offspring, nor documented the ratio of helpers to breeders. Here, we show in two hunter–gatherer societies of South America that each breeding pair with dependent offspring on average obtained help from approximately 1.3 non-reproductive adults. Young married males and unmarried males of all ages were the main food providers, accounting for 93–100% of all excess food production available to breeding pairs and their offspring. Thus, each breeding pair with dependants was provisioned on average by 0.8 adult male helpers. The data provide no support for the hypothesis that post-reproductive females are the main provisioners of younger reproductive-aged kin in hunter–gatherer societies. Demographic and food acquisition data show that most breeding pairs can expect food deficits owing to foraging luck, health disabilities and accumulating dependency ratio of offspring in middle age, and that extra-pair provisioning may be essential to the evolved human life history.

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Research works printed but not linked: 7

  1. Hewlett B., 1991, J. Anthropol. Res., 1
  2. Hill K., The origins of human uniqueness: the evolution of characters underlying behavioral modernity, Evol. Anthropol
  3. Hrdy S. B., 2005, Hunter-gatherer childhoods: evolutionary, developmental, and cultural perspectives, 65
  4. Hrdy S. B., 2009, Mother and others: the evolutionary origins of mutual understanding
  5. McMillan G.. 2001. Ache residential grouping and social foraging. PhD dissertation University of New Mexico.
  6. Sugiyama L. S., 2004, Socioeconomic aspects of human behavioral ecology: research in economic anthropology, 377
  7. Sugiyama L. S., 2000, Human behavior and adaptation: an anthropological perspective, 371

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Metadata

Authors
Hill, K., & Hurtado, A. M.
Affiliations
Arizona State University (US)
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Publisher
The Royal Society
Published
2009-08-19
Volume
276
Issue
1674
Pages
3863-3870
ISSN
  • 0080-4649 (ISSN-L)
  • 0962-8452
  • 1471-2954
DOI
10.1098/rspb.2009.1061
PMC
PMC2817285
OpenAlex
W2152926170
Cited by
290
References
62
Citations by year
2026: 7 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 22 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 32 · 2014: 23 · 2013: 17 · 2012: 17
FWCI
21.58
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
royalsociety.org/journals/ethics-policies/data-sharing-mining/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
Keywords
cooperative breeding, hunter-gatherers, food provisioning, helpers at the nest, kinship, life history, dependency ratio, foraging, prosocial behavior, South American indigenous peoples
MeSH terms
Cooperative Behavior, Female, Food, Helping Behavior, Humans, Male, Reproduction, South America, Time Factors, Trees

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