Work was conducted among traditional, subsistence whale hunters in Lamalera, Indonesia, in order to test if strict biological kinship or lineage membership is more important for explaining the organization of cooperative hunting parties ranging in size from 8 to 14 men. Crew identifications were collected for all 853 hunts that occurred between May 3 and August 5, 1999. Lineage identity and genetic relatedness were determined for a sample of 189 hunters. Results of matrix regression show that genetic kinship explains little (...) of the hunters’ affiliations independent of lineage identity. Crew members are much more closely related to each other than expected by chance, but this is due to the correlation between lineage membership and genetic kinship. Lineage members are much more likely to affiliate in crews, but kin with r<0.5 are just as likely not to affiliate. The results are discussed vis-à-vis the evolution of cooperation and group identity. (shrink)

Native peoples have often been portrayed as natural conservationists, living a “balanced” existence with nature. It is argued that this perspective is a result of an imprecise operational definition of conservation. Conservation is defined here in contrast to the predictions of foraging theory, which assumes that foragers will behave to maximize their short-term harvesting rate. A behavior is deemed conservation when a short-term cost is paid by the resource harvester in exchange for long-term benefits in the form of sustainable harvests. (...) An example of the usefulness of such an operational definition is presented using data on patch and prey choice decisions of a group of subsistence hunters, the Piro of Amazonian Peru. Results indicate that the area around the Piro village is depleted of prey, and that hunters allocate more time to patches where return rates are highest. This response is consistent with both a conservation strategy and foraging theory. Contrary to the expectation of the conservation strategy, however, hunters do not restrain from pursing opportunistically encountered prey in the depleted areas. The implications for conservation policy are briefly discussed. (shrink)

The process of partner selection reflects ethnographic realities where cooperative rewards obtain that would otherwise be lost to loners. Baumard et al. neglect frequency-dependent processes exemplified by games of coordination. Such games can produce multiple equilibria that may or may not include fair outcomes. Additional, group-selection processes are required to produce the outcomes predicted by the models.