Paternal provisioning results from ecological change

Ingela Alger, Paul L. Hooper, Donald Cox (), Jonathan Stieglitz and Hillard S. Kaplan ()
Additional contact information
Paul L. Hooper: Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131; Economic Science Institute, Chapman University, Orange, CA 92866
Jonathan Stieglitz: University of Toulouse Capitole, 31042 Toulouse Cedex 9, France; Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, 31080 Toulouse Cedex 6, France; Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131
Hillard S. Kaplan: Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131; Economic Science Institute, Chapman University, Orange, CA 92866

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020, vol. 117, issue 20, 10746-10754

Abstract: Paternal provisioning among humans is puzzling because it is rare among primates and absent in nonhuman apes and because emergent provisioning would have been subject to paternity theft. A provisioning “dad” loses fitness at the hands of nonprovisioning, mate-seeking “cads.” Recent models require exacting interplay between male provisioning and female choice to overcome this social dilemma. We instead posit that ecological change favored widespread improvements in male provisioning incentives, and we show theoretically how social obstacles to male provisioning can be overcome. Greater availability of energetically rich, difficult-to-acquire foods enhances female–male and male–male complementarities, thus altering the fitness of dads versus cads. We identify a tipping point where gains from provisioning overcome costs from paternity uncertainty and the dad strategy becomes viable. Stable polymorphic states are possible, meaning that dads need not necessarily eliminate cads. Our simulations suggest that with sufficient complementarities, dads can emerge even in the face of high paternity uncertainty. Our theoretical focus on ecological change as a primary factor affecting the trade-off between male mating and parenting effort suggests different possibilities for using paleo-climatic, archaeological, and genomic evidence to establish the timing of and conditions associated with emergence of paternal provisioning in the hominin lineage.

Keywords: paternal care; fatherhood; human evolution; parental investment; cooperation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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