Paternal Provisioning Results from Ecological Change

Authors

Ingela Alger, Toulouse School of Economics
Paul L. Hooper, University of New Mexico
Donald Cox, Boston College
Jonathan Stieglitz, University of Toulouse Capitole
Hillard S. Kaplan, Chapman UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-1-2020

Abstract

Paternal provisioning is ubiquitous in human subsistence societies and unique among apes. How could paternal provisioning have emerged from promiscuous or polygynous mating systems that characterize other apes? An anomalous provisioning male would encounter a social dilemma: Since this investment in prospective offspring can be expropriated by other males, this investment is unlikely to increase the provisioner’s fitness. We present an ecological theory of the evolution of human paternal investment. Ecological change favoring reliance on energetically rich, difficult-to-acquire resources increases payoffs to paternal provisioning due to female–male and/or male–male complementarities. Paternal provisioning becomes a viable reproductive strategy when complementarities are strong, even under high paternity uncertainty. This model illuminates additional paths for understanding the evolution of fatherhood.

Comments

This article was originally published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, volume 117, issue 20, in 2020. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1917166117

Recommended Citation

Alger, I., Hooper, P. L., Cox, D., Stieglitz, J., & Kaplan, H. S. (2020). Paternal provisioning results from ecological change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(20), 10746–10754. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1917166117

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

The authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.