ArticleNature ecology & evolution2021
Global hunter-gatherer population densities constrained by influence of seasonality on diet composition.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- NAT2 global landscape: Genetic diversity and acetylation statuses from a systematic review.PloS one · 2023Pooled it
- Large estimated size of the Australian Indigenous population before its extensive decline following colonial invasion.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Life on the edge: Mesolithic population size and viability on Malta.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Dietary Saturated Fatty Acids as Evolutionarily Conserved Signals of Immune Activation.DNA and cell biology · 2026Review
- Environmental constraints and diffusion shaped the global transition to food production.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A framework for adequate nourishment: balancing nutrient density and food processing levels within the context of culturally and regionally appropriate diets.Animal frontiers : the review magazine of animal agriculture · 2025Article
- Reconstructing colonization dynamics to establish how human activities transformed island biodiversity.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Climate-driven habitat shifts of high-ranked prey species structure Late Upper Paleolithic hunting.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Ecosystem productivity affected the spatiotemporal disappearance of Neanderthals in Iberia.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
- Socio-ecological gap analysis to forecast species range contractions for conservation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Changes in limiting factors for forager population dynamics in Europe across the last glacial-interglacial transition.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Sociality predicts orangutan vocal phenotype.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The dependence of hunter-gatherers on local net primary production (NPP) to provide food played a major role in shaping long-term human population dynamics. Observations of contemporary hunter-gatherers have shown an overall correlation between population density and annual NPP but with a 1,000-fold variation in population density per unit NPP that remains unexplained. Here, we build a process-based hunter-gatherer population model embedded within a global terrestrial biosphere model, which explicitly addresses the extraction of NPP through dynamically allocated hunting and gathering activities. The emergent results reveal a strong, previously unrecognized effect of seasonality on population density via diet composition, whereby hunter-gatherers consume high fractions of meat in regions where growing seasons are short, leading to greatly reduced population density due to trophic inefficiency. This seasonal carnivory bottleneck largely explains the wide variation in population density per unit NPP and questions the prevailing usage of annual NPP as the proxy of carrying capacity for ancient humans. Our process-based approach has the potential to greatly refine our understanding of dynamical responses of ancient human populations to past environmental changes.
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