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Social Structure Facilitated the Evolution of Care-giving as a Strategy for Disease Control in the Human Lineage

Kessler, Sharon E.; Bonnell, Tyler R.; Setchell, Joanna M.; Chapman, Colin A.

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Authors

Sharon E. Kessler

Tyler R. Bonnell

Colin A. Chapman



Abstract

Humans are the only species to have evolved cooperative care-giving as a strategy for disease control. A synthesis of evidence from the fossil record, paleogenomics, human ecology, and disease transmission models, suggests that care-giving for the diseased evolved as part of the unique suite of cognitive and socio-cultural specializations that are attributed to the genus Homo. Here we demonstrate that the evolution of hominin social structure enabled the evolution of care-giving for the diseased. Using agent-based modeling, we simulate the evolution of care-giving in hominin networks derived from a basal primate social system and the three leading hypotheses of ancestral human social organization, each of which would have had to deal with the elevated disease spread associated with care-giving. We show that (1) care-giving is an evolutionarily stable strategy in kin-based cooperatively breeding groups, (2) care-giving can become established in small, low density groups, similar to communities that existed before the increases in community size and density that are associated with the advent of agriculture in the Neolithic, and (3) once established, care-giving became a successful method of disease control across social systems, even as community sizes and densities increased. We conclude that care-giving enabled hominins to suppress disease spread as social complexity, and thus socially-transmitted disease risk, increased.

Citation

Kessler, S. E., Bonnell, T. R., Setchell, J. M., & Chapman, C. A. (2018). Social Structure Facilitated the Evolution of Care-giving as a Strategy for Disease Control in the Human Lineage. Scientific Reports, 8(1), Article 13997. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-31568-2

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Aug 21, 2018
Online Publication Date Sep 27, 2018
Publication Date Sep 27, 2018
Deposit Date Sep 19, 2018
Publicly Available Date Sep 27, 2018
Journal Scientific Reports
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 8
Issue 1
Article Number 13997
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-31568-2

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or
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article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the
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copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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