Gene-Culture Coevolutionary Theory: A Test Case

Gene-culture coevolutionary theory has been developed specifically to explore the interaction between genetic and cultural processes. The theory builds on standard population genetics models by formally incorporating cultural transmission into the analysis. Here we present a case study which exploits this theory to explore the demographic and evolutionary consequences of cultural processes differentially affecting the mortality of the sexes such as female infanticide, sex-biased abortion, and sex selection. The example is designed to illustrate the logic and methods of this approach and demonstrate its advantages over more traditional methods. We show that gene-culture coevolutionary theory can be usefully employed to describe, analyze, and predict he diffusion of cultural traits and genetic variation through populations and to explore the interaction between these levels. We go on to defend this approach against a number of criticisms that have been leveled at it. The models have already been successfully applied to several problems in the human sciences, and there are rich possibilities for their utilization by anthropologists, human scientists, and biologists.

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