Humans possess the unique ability for cumulative culture [1, 2]. It has been argued that hunter-gatherer's complex social structure [3-9] has facilitated the evolution of cumulative culture by allowing information exchange among large pools of individuals [10-13]. However, empirical evidence for the interaction between social structure and cultural transmission is scant [14]. Here we examine the reported co-occurrence of plant uses between individuals in dyads (which we define as their "shared knowledge" of plant uses) in BaYaka Pygmies from Congo. We studied reported uses of 33 plants of 219 individuals from four camps. We show that (1) plant uses by BaYaka fall into three main domains: medicinal, foraging, and social norms/beliefs; (2) most medicinal plants have known bioactive properties, and some are positively associated with children's BMI, suggesting that their use is adaptive; (3) knowledge of medicinal plants is mainly shared between spouses and biological and affinal kin; and (4) knowledge of plant uses associated with foraging and social norms is shared more widely among campmates, regardless of relatedness, and is important for camp-wide activities that require cooperation. Our results show the interdependence between social structure and knowledge sharing. We propose that long-term pair bonds, affinal kin recognition, exogamy, and multi-locality create ties between unrelated families, facilitating the transmission of medicinal knowledge and its fitness implications. Additionally, multi-family camps with low inter-relatedness between camp members provide a framework for the exchange of functional information related to cooperative activities beyond the family unit, such as foraging and regulation of social life.

Social science is becoming increasingly important in conservation, with more studies involving methodologies that collect data from and about people. Conservation science is a normative and applied discipline designed to support and inform management and practice. Poor research practice risks harming participants and, researchers, and can leave negative legacies. Often, those at the forefront of field-based research are early-career researchers, many of whom enter their first research experience ill-prepared for the ethical conundrums they may face. We draw on our own experiences as early-career researchers to illuminate how ethical challenges arise during conservation research that involves human participants. Specifically, we considered ethical review procedures, conflicts of values, and power relations, and devised broad recommendations on how to navigate ethical challenges when they arise during research. In particular, we recommend researchers apply reflexivity (i.e., thinking that allows researchers to recognize the effect researchers have on the research) to help navigate ethical challenges and encourage greater engagement with ethical review processes and the development of ethical guidelines for conservation research that involves human participants. Such guidelines must be accompanied by the integration of rigorous ethical training into conservation education. We believe our experiences are not uncommon and can be avoided and hope to spark discussion to contribute to a more socially just conservation.

Conservationists are increasingly engaging with the concept of human well-being to improve the design and evaluation of their interventions. Since the convening of the influential Sarkozy Commission in 2009, development researchers have been refining conceptualizations and frameworks to understand and measure human well-being and are starting to converge on a common understanding of how best to do this. In conservation, the term human well-being is in widespread use, but there is a need for guidance on operationalizing it to measure the impacts of conservation interventions on people. We present a framework for understanding human well-being, which could be particularly useful in conservation. The framework includes 3 conditions; meeting needs, pursuing goals, and experiencing a satisfactory quality of life. We outline some of the complexities involved in evaluating the well-being effects of conservation interventions, with the understanding that well-being varies between people and over time and with the priorities of the evaluator. Key challenges for research into the well-being impacts of conservation interventions include the need to build up a collection of case studies so as to draw out generalizable lessons; harness the potential of modern technology to support well-being research; and contextualize evaluations of conservation impacts on well-being spatially and temporally within the wider landscape of social change. Pathways through the smog of confusion around the term well-being exist, and existing frameworks such as the Well-being in Developing Countries approach can help conservationists negotiate the challenges of operationalizing the concept. Conservationists have the opportunity to benefit from the recent flurry of research in the development field so as to carry out more nuanced and locally relevant evaluations of the effects of their interventions on human well-being.Consideración del Impacto de la Conservación sobre el Bienestar HumanoResumenLos conservacionistas cada vez más se comprometen con el concepto del bienestar humano para mejorar el diseño y la evaluación de sus intervenciones. Desde la convención de la influyente Comisión Sarkozy en 2009, los investigadores del desarrollo han estado refinando las conceptualizaciones y los marcos de trabajo para entender y medir el bienestar humano y están comenzando a convergir con un entendimiento común de cuál es la mejor forma de hacer esto. En la conservación el término bienestar humano tiene un uso amplio, pero existe la necesidad de la orientación en su operación para medir los impactos de las intervenciones de la conservación sobre la gente. Presentamos un marco de trabajo para entender el bienestar humano que podría ser útil particularmente en la conservación. El marco de trabajo incluye tres condiciones: cumplir con las necesidades, perseguir objetivos y experimentar una calidad satisfactoria de vida. Resumimos algunas de las complejidades involucradas en la evaluación de los efectos del bienestar de las intervenciones de la conservación con ...

The steady reduction in access to forest by Pygmy groups across Central Africa has resulted in most being more accurately called 'former hunter--gatherers' than hunter--gatherers. Today, the different Pygmy groups are characterised by great diversity (Bahuchet 2012). One small group in Cameroon, the Medzan, now occupy a savannah, many Twa groups in DR Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda have sedentarised amongst farming communities, and increasing numbers of Baka in Cameroon and Gabon are becoming sedentarised and alcoholised, along roadsides (Agland 2012). All experience increasing pressure from rampant commercial hunting, artisanal and industrial mining and logging activities, protected areas encompassing good forest, and in some places warring militias, government forces and refugees. Despite the great diversity of situations that many Pygmies groups find themselves in today they share some remarkable similarities. In particular, their egalitarian social organisation is bound up in a matrix with other key cultural practices. Hewlett identified some of these as spending at least four months a year hunting and gathering in the forest; strongly identifying with and preferring forest life; contrasting the 'forest world' to the 'village world'; having economies based on demand--sharing; practising important rituals associated with elephant hunting; having intimate parent--child relations; and diverse relationships with neighbouring farming groups (1996:215). Ethnomusicologists working among Pygmy groups across the Congo Basin remark on similarities in their unusual highly integrated choral yodelled (alternating between chest and head voice) and polyphonic (multiple overlapping melodies) singing style among groups living very far

This article forms part of an ongoing debate on rights and the use of the term ‘indigenous’, which has so far included exchanges in Current Anthropology, the New Humanist, and ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, as indicated in the bibliography. The authors here respond specifically to an article by Adam Kuper, published in Current Anthropology and the New Humanist. Professor Kuper has been invited to respond and has indicated his intention to do so in the forthcoming issue of ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY. Readers are invited to contribute their own views to the debate. [Ed.]