Reproductive Interests and Forager Mobility

MacDonald, Douglas H.; Hewlett, Barry S.

doi:10.1086/200047

Cited by 115 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Pinker [9] includes greater male lifetime travel in his updated list of Brown's human universals [10], yet most evidence for this purported human universal relies on anecdotal reports rather than systematic travel data. Such reports from hunter -gatherers, foragers and horticulturalists suggest a male-biased sex difference in travel (for review, see table 2 in [11]). In industrialized nations, women travel shorter distances daily than do men (e.g.…”

Section: (A) Sexual Selection and Human Travelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex difference in travel is concentrated in adolescence and tracks reproductive interests

et al. 2014

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Sexual selection theory suggests that the sex with a higher potential reproductive rate will compete more strongly for access to mates. Stronger intra-sexual competition for mates may explain why males travel more extensively than females in many terrestrial vertebrates. A male-bias in lifetime distance travelled is a purported human universal, although this claim is based primarily on anecdotes. Following sexual maturity, motivation to travel outside the natal territory may vary over the life course for both sexes. Here, we test whether travel behaviour among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists is associated with shifting reproductive priorities across the lifespan. Using structured interviews, we find that sex differences in travel peak during adolescence when men and women are most intensively searching for mates. Among married adults, we find that greater offspring dependency load is associated with reduced travel among women, but not men. Married men are more likely to travel alone than women, but only to the nearest market town and not to other Tsimane villages. We conclude that men's and women's travel behaviour reflects differential gains from mate search and parenting across the life course.

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Section: (A) Sexual Selection and Human Travelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex difference in travel is concentrated in adolescence and tracks reproductive interests

et al. 2014

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“…Many foragers have fluid group membership [17] and frequent movement across the landscape [18,19] to exploit a diversity of unevenly distributed food resources [20]. In these societies, marriages are often between unrelated individuals or more genealogically distant kin living in far-flung communities [21]. Marrying unrelated or distantly related individuals increases the total possible numbers of kin and affines by including a wider net of individuals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fitness consequences of spousal relatedness in 46 small-scale societies

2014

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Social norms that regulate reproductive and marital decisions generate impressive cross-cultural variation in the prevalence of kin marriages. In some societies, marriages among kin are the norm and this inbreeding creates intensive kinship networks concentrated within communities. In others, especially forager societies, most marriages are between more genealogically and geographically distant individuals, which generates a larger number of kin and affines of lesser relatedness in more extensive kinship networks spread out over multiple communities. Here, we investigate the fitness consequence of kin marriages across a sample of 46 small-scale societies (12 439 marriages). Results show that some non-forager societies (including horticulturalists, agriculturalists and pastoralists), but not foragers, have intensive kinship societies where fitness outcomes (measured as the number of surviving children in genealogies) peak at commonly high levels of spousal relatedness. By contrast, the extensive kinship systems of foragers have worse fitness outcomes at high levels of spousal relatedness. Overall, societies with greater levels of inbreeding showed a more positive relationship between fitness and spousal relatedness.

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“…However, little is known about how distal and proximal cues are used in larger scales compared with those used by traditional virtual Morris water mazes, an important question given that larger scales more closely approximate natural human navigation (Learmonth, Newcombe, Sheridan, & Jones, 2008). For example, the US Department of Transportation reported that average 21-to 35-year-olds travel 37.7 miles per day, with average trip length at 9.7 miles (Santos et al, 2011) and there is evidence that males travel more than females both in the USA (Santos et al, 2011) and crossculturally (e.g., Cashdan & Gaulin, 2016;MacDonald & Hewlett, 1999). Individual differences in egocentric and allocentric strategies are commonly used to explain the sex differences found in the Morris water maze.…”

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confidence: 99%

Sex differences in virtual navigation influenced by scale and navigation experience

et al. 2016

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The Morris water maze is a spatial abilities test adapted from the animal spatial cognition literature and has been studied in the context of sex differences in humans. This is because its standard design, which manipulates proximal (close) and distal (far) cues, applies to human navigation. However, virtual Morris water mazes test navigation skills on a scale that is vastly smaller than natural human navigation. Many researchers have argued that navigating in large and small scales is fundamentally different, and small-scale navigation might not simulate natural human navigation. Other work has suggested that navigation experience could influence spatial skills. To address the question of how individual differences influence navigational abilities in differently scaled environments, we employed both a large-(146.4 m in diameter) and a traditional-(36.6 m in diameter) scaled virtual Morris water maze along with a novel measure of navigation experience (lifetime mobility). We found sex differences on the small maze in the distal cue condition only, but in both cue-conditions on the large maze. Also, individual differences in navigation experience modulated navigation performance on the virtual water maze, showing that higher mobility was related to better performance with proximal cues for only females on the small maze, but for both males and females on the large maze.

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Reproductive Interests and Forager Mobility

Cited by 115 publications

References 36 publications

Sex difference in travel is concentrated in adolescence and tracks reproductive interests

Sex difference in travel is concentrated in adolescence and tracks reproductive interests

Fitness consequences of spousal relatedness in 46 small-scale societies

Sex differences in virtual navigation influenced by scale and navigation experience

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