ArticleScience advances2020
High rate of extrapair paternity in a human population demonstrates diversity in human reproductive strategies.
Article in Science advances, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Recovering the precolonial population structure of Khoe-San descendant populations.Science advances · 2026Article
- From Nuisance to Signal: Leveraging Close Relatives in Biobank-Scale Demographic Inference.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- No evidence for disassortative mating based on HLA in a small-scale, endogamous population.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- A practical guide to cross-cultural and multi-sited data collection in the biological and behavioural sciences.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Article
- Increased homozygosity due to endogamy results in fitness consequences in a human population.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Integrating sex-bias into studies of archaic introgression on chromosome X.PLoS genetics · 2023Article
- Reproductive inequality in humans and other mammals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Gendered conflict in the human family.Evolutionary human sciences · 2023Review
- Examination of runs of homozygosity in relation to height in an endogamous Namibian population.American journal of biological anthropology · 2023Article
- The effect of mating market dynamics on partner preference and relationship quality among Himba pastoralists.Science advances · 2022Article
- Global phylogenetic analysis reveals multiple origins and correlates of genital mutilation/cutting.Nature human behaviour · 2022Article
- The significant role of post-pairing male behavior on the evolution of male preferences and female traits.Communications biology · 2022Article
- An Evolutionary Model of "Sexual Conflict" Over Women's Age at Marriage: Implications for Child Mortality and Undernutrition.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Theoretical Reproductive Outcomes of the Sexual Conflict in Humans.Doklady biological sciences : proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Biological sciences sections · 2021Article
- Balancing costs and benefits in primates: ecological and palaeoanthropological views.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Of mice and women: advances in mammalian sperm competition with a focus on the female perspective.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Why men invest in non-biological offspring: paternal care and paternity confidence among Himba pastoralists.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Resource demands reduce partner discrimination in Himba women.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
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Abstract
Among nonhuman species, social monogamy is rarely accompanied by complete fidelity. Evolutionary theory predicts that the rate of extrapair paternity (EPP) should vary according to socioecological conditions. In humans, however, geneticists contend that EPP is negligible and relatively invariable. This conclusion is based on a limited set of studies, almost all of which describe European-descent groups. Using a novel, double-blind method designed in collaboration with a community of Himba pastoralists, we find that the rate of EPP in this population is 48%, with 70% of couples having at least one EPP child. Both men and women were very accurate at detecting cases of EPP. These data suggest that the range of variation in EPP across human populations is substantially greater than previously thought. We further show that a high rate of EPP can be accompanied by high paternity confidence, which highlights the importance of disaggregating EPP from the notion of "cuckoldry."
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