ArticleScientific reports2016
The evolution of monogamy in response to partner scarcity.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- How Do People Maintain Consensual Non-Monogamy? An International Development and Validation of the Multiple Relationships Maintenance Scale.Archives of sexual behavior · 2026Article
- Targeting the Hunting Hypothesis: Review of Evidence From the Hadza.Evolutionary anthropology · 2025Review
- Revisiting "Grandmothers and the Evolution of Human Longevity" 2003 AJHB https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.10156.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- Evolution of Human Pair Bonds as a Consequence of Male-Biased Mating Sex Ratios?Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2025Article
- Little evidence that nonmonogamous family structures are detrimental to children's well-being in Mpimbwe, Tanzania.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Females increase reproductive investment when mated to less sexually attractive males in a serially monogamous fish.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Sex ratios and gender norms: why both are needed to understand sexual conflict in humans.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Review
- Reproductive inequality in humans and other mammals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Life history impacts on infancy and the evolution of human social cognition.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- The content and structure of reputation domains across human societies: a view from the evolutionary social sciences.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Coevolution of female fidelity and male help in populations with alternative reproductive tactics.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Papa Don't Preach? : Using Lies to Expose the Truth about Who Suppresses Female Sexuality.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2020Article
- Cognitive consequences of our grandmothering life history: cultural learning begins in infancy.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Sexual dimorphism in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) and human age-specific fertility.Journal of human evolution · 2020Article
- The Effects of the Mating Market, Sex, Age, and Income on Sociopolitical Orientation : Insights from Evolutionary Theory and Sexual Economics Theory.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2020Article
- Hunter-gatherer studies and human evolution: A very selective review.American journal of physical anthropology · 2018Article
- Female dispersion and sex ratios interact in the evolution of mating behavior: a computational model.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Do mothers also "manipulate" grandparental care?PeerJ · 2018Article
- Evolution of male strategies with sex-ratio-dependent pay-offs: connecting pair bonds with grandmothering.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Sex roles and adult sex ratios: insights from mammalian biology and consequences for primate behaviour.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
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Abstract
The evolution of monogamy and paternal care in humans is often argued to have resulted from the needs of our expensive offspring. Recent research challenges this claim, however, contending that promiscuous male competitors and the risk of cuckoldry limit the scope for the evolution of male investment. So how did monogamy first evolve? Links between mating strategies and partner availability may offer resolution. While studies of sex roles commonly assume that optimal mating rates for males are higher, fitness payoffs to monogamy and the maintenance of a single partner can be greater when partners are rare. Thus, partner availability is increasingly recognized as a key variable structuring mating behavior. To apply these recent insights to human evolution, we model three male strategies - multiple mating, mate guarding and paternal care - in response to partner availability. Under assumed ancestral human conditions, we find that male mate guarding, rather than paternal care, drives the evolution of monogamy, as it secures a partner and ensures paternity certainty in the face of more promiscuous competitors. Accordingly, we argue that while paternal investment may be common across human societies, current patterns should not be confused with the reason pairing first evolved.
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