This is the next in my series of saved Canvas discussions from our Human Ecology seminar, Fall of 2025. This one is rather less narrative than the others so far. In this note, I wanted to provide the students some more launching points for thinking about both HBE and cultural evolution as applied to sustainability. If I’m being totally honest, I think the note fell mostly on deaf ears. The students generally didn’t seem very interested in theory broadly and anything smacking of evolutionary theory in particular. By publishing this list here, maybe it will actually be useful to someone somewhere else.
Please note that this is far from a comprehensive list. As with most things, context is important: this is lightly edited from a a note I wrote to students on Canvas to suggest places to explore topics in sustainability using the evolutionary human sciences.
Human Behavioral Ecology and Cultural Evolution
Some readings to go beyond class. Also, papers I mentioned in passing during class. Mostly just a list; some brief annotations for some of them though.
Extensions of HBE
Gibson, M.A., and D.W. Lawson. 2015. Applying evolutionary anthropology. Evolutionary Anthropology. 24 (1):3-14. (doi:10.1002/evan.21432)
Gibson, M.A., and D.W. Lawson. 2014. Applied Evolutionary Anthropology: Darwinian Approaches to Contemporary World Issues. New York: Springer.
Taylor, Lisa R. 2005. Dangerous Trade‐offs: The Behavioral Ecology of Child Labor and Prostitution in Rural Northern Thailand. Current Anthropology. 46 (3):411-431. (doi:10.1086/430079)
Tucker, B. 2007. Applying Behavioral Ecology and Behavioral Economics to Conservation and Development Planning: An Example from the Mikea Forest, Madagascar. Human Nature. 18 (3):190-208. (doi:10.1007/s12110-007-9017-x)
Price, M.H., and J.H. Jones. 2020. Fitness-maximizers employ pessimistic probability weighting for decisions under risk. Evolutionary Human Sciences. 2:e28. (doi:10.1017/ehs.2020.28)
- Evolutionary first-principles derivation of rank-dependent utility as an optimal decision-making tool for economic decisions under risk.
Jones, J.H. 2015. Resource Transfers and Human Life-History Evolution. Annual Review of Anthropology. 44 (1):513-531. (doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-013938)
- Economics trumps fitness and, even more so, culture in understanding patterns of fertility. But what about variability…?
Cultural Evolution and Natural Resource Management
Andrews, J., and M. Borgerhoff Mulder. 2018. Cultural group selection and the design of REDD+: insights from Pemba. Sustainability Science. 13 (1):93-107. (doi:10.1007/s11625-017-0489-2)
Borgerhoff Mulder, M. 2003. Conservation: Linking Ecology, Economics, and Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kaaronen, R.O., and N. Strelkovskii. 2020. Cultural Evolution of Sustainable Behaviors: Pro-environmental Tipping Points in an Agent-Based Model. One Earth. 2 (1):85-97. (doi:10.1016/j.oneear.2020.01.003)
Kline, M.A., T.M. Waring, and J. Salerno. 2017. Designing cultural multilevel selection research for sustainability science. Sustainability Science. (doi:10.1007/s11625-017-0509-2)
- The canonical paper on using multi-level-selection (MLS) theory (i.e., “group selection”) to help foster sustainability. This is an idea that has been promoted by the organization, Prosocial World, founded by MLS pioneer David Sloan Wilson. Prosocial World uses cultural evolutionary ideas, particularly MLS to drive prosocial social change: https://www.prosocial.world/
HBE and Natural Resource Management
Bird, R.B., D.W. Bird, B.F. Codding, C.H. Parker, and J.H. Jones. 2008. The “fire stick farming” hypothesis: Australian Aboriginal foraging strategies, biodiversity, and anthropogenic fire mosaics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 105 (39):14796–14801. (doi:10.1073/pnas.0804757105)
- The behavior of individual foragers trying to maximize short-term foraging returns scales to produce landscape effects promoting greater beta/gamma diversity.
Moritz, M., R. Behnke, C.M. Beitl, R. Bliege Bird, R.M. Chiaravalloti, J.K. Clark, S.A. Crabtree, S.S. Downey, I.M. Hamilton, S.C. Phang, P. Scholte, and J.A. Wilson. 2018. Emergent sustainability in open property regimes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 (51):12859-12867. (doi:10.1073/pnas.1812028115)
- Don’t tell Mark I called a paper he led “behavioral ecology.” The problem is, many of his co-authors are HBEs as are the central theoretical framework of the paper (e.g., ideal free distribution), though it does also bring in key concepts in socio-ecological systems (e.g., coupling), where he is far more comfortable.
Smith, E.A., and M. Wishnie. 2000. Conservation and subsistence in small-scale societies. Annual Review of Anthropology. 29:493-524. (doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.29.1.493)
Winterhalder, B., and F. Lu. 1997. A forager resource population ecology model and implications for indigenous conservation. Conservation Biology. 11 (6):1354-1364. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2387362)
Mace, R., and A. Houston. 1989. Pastoralist strategies for survival in unpredictable environments: A model of herd composition that maximises household viability. Agricultural Systems. 31 (2):185-204. (doi:10.1016/0308-521x(89)90020-6)
- Ruth Mace wrote a series of papers based on her dissertation looking at optimal herd management for pastoralists in northern Kenya. This is the first with her PhD advisor Alasdair Houston, one of the OGs of British behavioral (excuse me, behavioural) ecology.
- The tool she uses in these papers has fallen out of favor largely because anthropologists, for the most part, have been unwilling to learn the math/programming needed to execute it.
- This is more than just a bit absurd since dynamic programming is (1) not that hard, (2) very powerful, (3) exactly the sort of model we need for many complex resource-management problems.
More Cultural Evolution and SES
Hébert-Dufresne, L., T.M. Waring, G. St-Onge, M.T. Niles, L. Kati Corlew, M.P. Dube, S.J. Miller, N.J. Gotelli, and B.J. McGill. 2022. Source-sink behavioural dynamics limit institutional evolution in a group-structured society. Royal Society Open Science. 9 (3):211743. (doi:10.1098/rsos.211743)
Cultural Evolution and Diffusion
Turner, M.A., A.L. Singleton, M.J. Harris, I. Harryman, C.A. Lopez, R.F. Arthur, C. Muraida, and J.H. Jones. 2023. Minority-group incubators and majority-group reservoirs support the diffusion of climate change adaptations. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 378 (1889):20220401. (doi:10.1098/rstb.2022.0401)
- Innovations come from the periphery of cohesive social groups. There are structural reasons for this.
Pisor, A.C., X. Basurto, K.G. Douglass, K.J. Mach, E. Ready, J.M. Tylianakis, A. Hazel, M.A. Kline, K.L. Kramer, J.S. Lansing, M. Moritz, P.E. Smaldino, T.F. Thornton, and J.H. Jones. 2022. Effective climate change adaptation means supporting community autonomy. Nature Climate Change. 12:213–215. (doi:10.1038/s41558-022-01303-x)