Evolutionary ecology and resource conservation

Abstract

Many important aspects of human nature revolve around common problems associated with acquiring, defending, and distributing resources. It is increasingly evident that foraging constraints,1 as well as competition, and cooperation with conspecifics,2–4 selected for increased intelligence in primates. The cognitive tools for responding to risk and reward likely evolved in a context of resource acquisition and distribution during our evolutionary past, in the so-called environment of evolutionary adaptedness.5–7 The cognitive skills required for cooperative hunting, such as cheater and cooperator detectors,8 and especially the accounting required for fitnessenhancing harvesting, distribution, and consumption (e.g., time discounting9), are reflected in behaviors we exhibit today. Our evolved psychological disposition to respond economically is likely derived from past ecological relationships with the beasts our hominid ancestors preyed on and the organisms that preyed on hominids. It is not hard to imagine that many human social and political institutions have developed as solutions to complex economic production and distribution problems.10 Thus, it not surprising that human evolutionary ecology borrows from economic theory9,11–15 and, increasingly, vice versa.16–20 It is in this context that the topic of resource conservation has been the focus of theoretical development and hypothesis-testing by evolutionary ecologists. As I will show, the initial evolutionary approach to resource conservation has contrasted predictions generated from optimal foraging theory with predictions based on assumptions of conservation. This work Michael S. Alvard is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. His research uses evolutionary theory to understand human foraging behavior. He has done field work with the Piro and Machiguenga Indians and the Wana of Upland Sulawesi, Indonesia. He is currently researching cooperative hunting among a group of whale hunters in the Lesser Sunda Islands, Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. E-mail: alvard@acsu.buffalo.edu