Adaptive Consequenses of Partible Paternity

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This project involves the research of a cultural anthropologist from Pennsylvania State University. The project will test the evolutionary significance of a system of social paternity among a tribal group in lowland Venezuela which allows multiple males to claim paternity of a child. When paternity is recognized, the adult has responsibilities to care for the child as a parent. The hypothesis is that some mothers (in regions with high male death rates due to homicide) will claim that men have paternal ties to the mothers' children in order to increase their own, and their children's chances of successful survival. The project will collect reproduction data on about 70 women to add to the investigator's data base, and will complete data on about 800 children. This research is important because it will test a theory of the positive functions of `multiple paternity` in a relatively simple forest-dwelling social group. This will advance our understanding of the likely social arrangements of primitive social groups in human history.