Department of Anthropology

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Browsing Department of Anthropology by Author "Alam, Nurul"

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    Reproductive inequality in humans and other mammals
    (National Academy of the Sciences, 2023) Ross, Cody T.; Hooper, Paul L.; Smith, Jennifer E.; Jaeggi, Adrian V.; Smith, Eric Alden; Gavrilets, Sergey; Zohora, Fatema tuz; Ziker, John; Xygalatas, Dimitris; Wroblewski, Emily E.; Wood, Brian; Winterhalder, Bruce; Willfuehr, Kai P.; Willard, Aiyana K.; Walker, Kara; von Rueden, Christopher; Voland, Eckart; Valeggia, Claudia; Vaitla, Bapu; Urlacher, Samuel; Towner, Mary; Sum, Chun-Yi; Sugiyama, Lawrence S.; Strier, Karen B.; Starkweather, Kathrine; Major-Smith, Daniel; Shenk, Mary; Sear, Rebecca; Seabright, Edmond; Schacht, Ryan; Scelza, Brooke; Scaggs, Shane; Salerno, Jonathan; Revilla-Minaya, Caissa; Redhead, Daniel; Pusey, Anne; Purzycki, Benjamin Grant; Power, Eleanor A.; Pisor, Anne; Pettay, Jenni; Perry, Susan; Page, Abigail E.; Pacheco-Cobos, Luis; Oths, Kathryn; Oh, Seung-Yun; Nolin, David; Nettle, Daniel; Moya, Cristina; Migliano, Andrea Bamberg; Mertens, Karl J.; McNamara, Rita A.; McElreath, Richard; Mattison, Siobhan; Massengill, Eric; Marlowe, Frank; Madimenos, Felicia; Macfarlan, Shane; Lummaa, Virpi; Lizarralde, Roberto; Liu, Ruizhe; Liebert, Melissa A.; Lew-Levy, Sheina; Leslie, Paul; Lanning, Joseph; Kramer, Karen; Koster, Jeremy; Kaplan, Hillard S.; Jamsranjav, Bayarsaikhan; Hurtado, A. Magdalena; Hill, Kim; Hewlett, Barry; Helle, Samuli; Headland, Thomas; Headland, Janet; Gurven, Michael; Grimalda, Gianluca; Greaves, Russell; Golden, Christopher D.; Godoy, Irene; Gibson, Mhairi; El Mouden, Claire; Dyble, Mark; Draper, Patricia; Downey, Sean; DeMarco, Angelina L.; Davis, Helen Elizabeth; Crabtree, Stefani; Cortez, Carmen; Colleran, Heidi; Cohen, Emma; Cohen, Emma; Clark, Gregory; Clark, Julia; Caudell, Mark A.; Carminito, Chelsea E.; Bunce, John; Boyette, Adam; Bowles, Samuel; Blumenfield, Tami; Beheim, Bret; Beckerman, Stephen; Atkinson, Quentin; Apicella, Coren; Alam, Nurul; Mulder, Monique Borgerhoff; The Santa Fe Institute; Max Planck Society; University of New Mexico; University of Zurich; University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle; University of Tennessee Knoxville; International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (ICDDR); Idaho; Boise State University; University of Connecticut; Stanford University; University of California Los Angeles; University of California Davis; Carl von Ossietzky Universitat Oldenburg; Brunel University; North Carolina State University; University of Richmond; Justus Liebig University Giessen; Yale University; Harvard University; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Baylor University; Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR); Oklahoma State University - Stillwater; Boston University; University of Oregon; University of Wisconsin Madison; University of Illinois Chicago; University of Illinois Chicago Hospital; University of Bristol; Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park; University of London; London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; University of North Carolina; East Carolina University; Ohio State University; Colorado State University; Duke University; Aarhus University; London School Economics & Political Science; Washington State University; University of Turku; Universidad Veracruzana; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa; University of Massachusetts Amherst; UDICE-French Research Universities; Universite PSL; Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS); Victoria University Wellington; University of Cambridge; Queens College NY (CUNY); University of Utah; University of Central Venezuela; Northern Arizona University; Durham University; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; University of Cincinnati; Chapman University; Arizona State University; Arizona State University-Tempe; University of California Santa Barbara; Institut fur Weltwirtschaft an der Universitat Kiel (IFW); University of Bielefeld; University of Oxford; University College London; University of Nebraska Lincoln; Utah State University; Yunnan University; University of Auckland; University of Pennsylvania
    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.