Evolutionary history of partible paternity in lowland South America - PubMed (original) (raw)

Evolutionary history of partible paternity in lowland South America

Robert S Walker et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010.

Abstract

Partible paternity, the conception belief that more than one man can contribute to the formation of a fetus, is common in lowland South America and characterized by nonexclusive mating relationships and various institutionalized forms of recognition and investment by multiple cofathers. Previous work has emphasized the fitness benefits for women where partible paternity beliefs facilitate paternal investment from multiple men and may reduce the risk of infanticide. In this comparative study of 128 lowland South American societies, the prevalence of partible paternity beliefs may be as much as two times as common as biologically correct beliefs in singular paternity. Partible paternity beliefs are nearly ubiquitous in four large language families--Carib, Pano, Tupi, and Macro-Je. Phylogenetic reconstruction suggests that partible paternity evolved deep in Amazonian prehistory at the root of a tentative Je-Carib-Tupi clade. Partible paternity often occurs with uxorilocal postmarital residence (males transfer), although there are exceptions. Partible paternity may have benefits for both sexes, especially in societies where essentially all offspring are said to have multiple fathers. Despite a decrease in paternity certainty, at least some men probably benefit (or mitigate costs) by increasing their number of extramarital partners, using sexual access to their wives to formalize male alliances, and/or sharing paternity with close kin.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.

Postmarital residence (left side: red, uxorilocal; black, virilocal; cyan, ambi/neolocal) and paternity beliefs (right side: orange, partible; black, singular) mapped onto a phylogeny. Qualifiers are given on some tip names for universal (univ) and weak partible paternity. Both reconstructions use maximum parsimony with 25 evolutionary steps for postmarital residence and 6 steps for paternity beliefs. Language families are labeled at the base of each clade. Branch lengths are arbitrary. Note that missing data exist where societies do not have squares at the tips.

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.

Approximate distribution of the six major language families discussed in this study. Data provided by World Language Mapping System.

References

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