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Testing adaptive hypotheses of alloparenting in Agta foragers
Abigail E Page1,2, Matthew G Thomas3, Daniel Smith4
1Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK. abigail.page@lshtm.ac.uk.
Nature Human Behaviour
|August 14, 2019
Summary
Alloparents, or non-parental caregivers, assist human mothers due to kinship and reciprocity. These factors explain why individuals help care for children, supporting mothers with energetically demanding offspring.
Area of Science:
- Human evolutionary biology
- Anthropology
- Behavioral ecology
Background:
- Human children receive care from non-parental caregivers (alloparents).
- Limited research systematically tests hypotheses for alloparental care.
- Understanding alloparental motivations is key to human reproductive success.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test kin selection, reciprocity, learning-to-mother, and costly signaling hypotheses for alloparental care.
- To investigate the drivers of non-parental childcare among Agta hunter-gatherers.
- To understand the unique aspects of human alloparenting.
Main Methods:
- Utilized high-resolution proximity data.
- Analyzed 1,701 child-alloparent dyads.
- Applied statistical models to test evolutionary hypotheses.
Main Results:
- Reciprocity and relatedness positively correlated with childcare interactions.
- Need influenced close kin (indirect benefits), while reciprocity influenced non-kin (direct benefits).
- Kinship-based interactions were also contingent on reciprocity.
Conclusions:
- Kinship and reciprocity are key drivers of alloparental care in humans.
- Alloparenting supports mothers in raising energetically demanding offspring.
- Human alloparental systems are unique among primates.
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