Experimental evidence for convergent evolution of maternal care heuristics in industrialized and small-scale populations

Geoff Kushnick*, Ben Hanowell, Jun Hong Kim, Banrida Langstieh, Vittorio Magnano, Katalin Oláh

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    2 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Maternal care decision rules should evolve responsiveness to factors impinging on the fitness pay-offs of care. Because the caretaking environments common in industrialized and smallscale societies vary in predictable ways, we hypothesize that heuristics guiding maternal behaviour will also differ between these two types of populations. We used a factorial vignette experiment to elicit third-party judgements about likely caretaking decisions of a hypothetical mother and her child when various fitness-relevant factors (maternal age and access to resources, and offspring age, sex and quality) were varied systematically in seven populations—three industrialized and four small-scale. Despite considerable variation in responses, we found that three of five main effects, and the two severity effects, exhibited statistically significant industrialized/ small-scale population differences. All differences could be explained as adaptive solutions to industrialized versus small-scale caretaking environments. Further, we found gradients in the relationship between the population-specific estimates and national-level socio-economic indicators, further implicating important aspects of the variation in industrialized and small-scale caretaking environments in shaping heuristics. Although there is mounting evidence for a genetic component to human maternal behaviour, there is no current evidence for interpopulation variation in candidate genes. We nonetheless suggest that heuristics guiding maternal behaviour in diverse societies emerge via convergent evolution in response to similar selective pressures.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number140518
    JournalRoyal Society Open Science
    Volume2
    Issue number6
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jun 2015

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Experimental evidence for convergent evolution of maternal care heuristics in industrialized and small-scale populations'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this