Living in Enclaves

What are the consequences of living in small isolated communities vs living in larger environments as members of bigger communities? If the resources are scarce and highly spatially and temporally variable, living in isolated communities can lead to extinction because of temporary food scarcity and less efficient genetic selection. Artifacts that increase the energy extracted from natural resources can avoid extinction of local populations, but still choosing the artifacts to be reproduced from the restricted artifact pool of the local community rather than from a larger pool leads to less good artifacts and smaller global population size. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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