Authors

Cody T. Ross, Santa Fe Institute
Paul L. Hooper, Chapman University
Jennifer E. Smith, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
Adrian V. Jaeggi, University of Zürich
Eric Alden Smith, University of Washington
Sergey Gavrilets, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Fatema tuz Zohora, International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research
John Ziker, Boise State University
Dimitris Xygalatas, University of Connecticut - Storrs
Emily E. Wroblewski, Stanford University
Brian Wood, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Bruce Winterhalder, University of California, Davis
Kai P. Willführ, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
Aiyana K. Willard, Brunel University
Kara Walker, North Carolina State University at Raleigh
Christopher von Rueden, University of RichmondFollow
Eckart Voland, Justus-Liebig University
Claudia Valeggia, Yale University
Bapu Vaitla, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Samuel Urlacher, Baylor University
Mary Towner, Oklahoma State University
Chun-Yi Sum, Boston University
Lawrence S. Sugiyama, University of Oregon
Karen B. Strier, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Kathrine Starkweather, The University of Illinois at Chicago
Daniel Major-Smith, University of Bristol
Mary Shenk, The Pennsylvania State University
Rebecca Sear, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Edmond Seabright, University of New Mexico
Ryan Schacht, East Carolina University
Brooke Scelza, University of California, Los Angeles
Shane Scaggs, Ohio State University
Jonathan Salerno, Colorado State University - Fort Collins
Caissa Revilla-Minaya, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Daniel Redhead, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Anne Pusey, Duke University
Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Eleanor A. Power, Santa Fe Institute
Anne Pisor, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Jenni Pettay, University of Turku
Susan Perry, University of California, Los Angeles
Abigail E. Page, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Luis Pacheco-Cobos, Universidad Veracruzana
Kathryn Oths, University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa
Seung-Yun Oh, Korea Insurance Research Institute
David Nolin, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Daniel Nettle, Ecole Normale Supérieure
Cristina Moya, University of California, Davis
Andrea Bamberg Migliano, University of Zürich
Karl J. Mertens, Boise State University
Rita A. McNamara, Victoria University of Wellington
Richard McElreath, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Siobhan Mattison, University of New Mexico
Eric Massengill, University of New Mexico
Frank Marlowe, University of Cambridge
Felicia Madimenos, Queens College (CUNY)
Shane Macfarlan, University of Utah
Virpi Lummaa, University of Turku
Roberto Lizarralde, Oklahoma State University
Ruizhe Liu, University of New Mexico
Melissa A. Liebert, Northern Arizona University
Sheina Lew-Levy, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Paul Leslie, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Joseph Lanning, SIT Graduate Institute
Karen Kramer, University of Utah
Jeremy Koster, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Hillard S. Kaplan, Chapman UniversityFollow
Bayarsaikhan Jamsranjav, National Museum of Mongolia
A. Magdalena Hurttado, ddd
Kim Hill, Arizona State University
Barry Hewlett, Washington State University
Samili Helle, University of Turku
Thomas Headland, SIL International
Janet Headland, SIL International
Michael Gurven, University of California, Santa Barbara
Gianluca Grimalda, Kiel Institute for the World Economy
Russell Greaves, University of Utah
Christopher D. Golden, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Irene Godoy, Bielefeld University
Mhairi Gibson, University of Bristol
Claire El Mouden, University of Oxford
Mark Dyble, University College London
Patricia Draper, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Sean Downey, Ohio State University
Angelina L. DeMarco, University of Utah
Helen Elizabeth Davis, Harvard University
Stefani Crabtree, Santa Fe Institute
Carmen Cortez, University of California, Davis
Heidi Colleran, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Emma Cohen, University of Oxford
Gregory Clark, University of California, Davis
Julia Clark, Nomad Science
Mark A. Caudell, Washington State University
Chelsea E. Carminito, University of Cincinnati
John Bunce, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Adam Boyette, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Samuel Bowles, Santa Fe Institute
Tami Blumenfield, University of New Mexico
Bret Beheim, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Stephen Beckerman, The Pennsylvania State University
Quentin Atkinson, University of Auckland
Coren Apicella, University of Pennsylvania
Nurul Alam, International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research
Monique Borgerhoff Mulder, Santa Fe Institute

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-22-2023

Abstract

To address claims of human exceptionalism, we determine where humans fit within the greater mammalian distribution of reproductive inequality. We show that humans exhibit lower reproductive skew (i.e., inequality in the number of surviving offspring) among males and smaller sex differences in reproductive skew than most other mammals, while nevertheless falling within the mammalian range. Additionally, female reproductive skew is higher in polygynous human populations than in polygynous nonhumans mammals on average. This patterning of skew can be attributed in part to the prevalence of monogamy in humans compared to the predominance of polygyny in nonhuman mammals, to the limited degree of polygyny in the human societies that practice it, and to the importance of unequally held rival resources to women’s fitness. The muted reproductive inequality observed in humans appears to be linked to several unusual characteristics of our species—including high levels of cooperation among males, high dependence on unequally held rival resources, complementarities between maternal and paternal investment, as well as social and legal institutions that enforce monogamous norms.

Comments

This article was originally published in PNAS, volume 120, issue 22, in 2023. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2220124120

pnas.2220124120.sapp.pdf (1597 kB)
Supporting information - Appendix 01

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

The authors

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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