ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2017
Adult sex ratios and partner scarcity among hunter-gatherers: implications for dispersal patterns and the evolution of human sociality.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Adult Sex Ratio as a Demographic Feedback Linking Mating Systems, Parental Care, and Evolution.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Review
- The DCIDE framework: systematic investigation of evolutionary hypotheses, exemplified with autism.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Hominin Population Structure, Mating Systems, and Intrasexual Competition : Implications for Craniofacial Robusticity and the Self-Domestication Hypothesis.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Explaining the prevalence of marital conflict: conceptual bifurcation and sociological explanations.Frontiers in sociology · 2025Review
- Neurodevelopmental timing and socio-cognitive development in a prosocial cooperatively breeding primate (Science advances · 2024Article
- Review
- Female cooperation: evolutionary, cross-cultural and ethnographic evidence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Adult sex ratios: causes of variation and implications for animal and human societies.Communications biology · 2022Review
- Why do we pick similar mates, or do we?Biology letters · 2021Review
- Was Cinderella just a fairy tale? Survival differences between stepchildren and their half-siblings.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Relatedness within and between Agta residential groups.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Article
- Article
- Kinship ties across the lifespan in human communities.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Dispersal and reproductive careers of male mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda.Primates; journal of primatology · 2019Article
- Sex roles and sexual selection: lessons from a dynamic model system.Current zoology · 2018Article
- Causes and consequences of adult sex ratio imbalance in a historical U.S. population.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Estimating adult sex ratios in nature.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Not all sex ratios are equal: the Fisher condition, parental care and sexual selection.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Adult sex ratios and reproductive strategies: a critical re-examination of sex differences in human and animal societies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Article
- 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
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Small populations are susceptible to high genetic loads and random fluctuations in birth and death rates. While these selective forces can adversely affect their viability, small populations persist across taxa. Here, we investigate the resilience of small groups to demographic uncertainty, and specifically to fluctuations in adult sex ratio (ASR), partner availability and dispersal patterns. Using 25 years of demographic data for two Savannah Pumé groups of South American hunter-gatherers, we show that in small human populations: (i) ASRs fluctuate substantially from year to year, but do not consistently trend in a sex-biased direction; (ii) the primary driver of local variation in partner availability is stochasticity in the sex ratio at maturity; and (iii) dispersal outside of the group is an important behavioural means to mediate locally constrained mating options. To then simulate conditions under which dispersal outside of the local group may have evolved, we develop two mathematical models. Model results predict that if the ASR is biased, the globally rarer sex should disperse. The model's utility is then evaluated by applying our empirical data to this central prediction. The results are consistent with the observed hunter-gatherer pattern of variation in the sex that disperses. Together, these findings offer an alternative explanation to resource provisioning for the evolution of traits central to human sociality (e.g. flexible dispersal, bilocal post-marital residence and cooperation across local groups). We argue that in small populations, looking outside of one's local group is necessary to find a mate and that, motivated by ASR imbalance, the alliances formed to facilitate the movement of partners are an important foundation for the human-typical pattern of network formation across local groups.This article is part of the themed issue 'Adult sex ratios and reproductive decisions: a critical re-examination of sex differences in human and animal societies'.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.