Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T21:48:13.119Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Condition-dependent adaptive phenotypic plasticity and interspecific gene-culture coevolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2012

Marion Blute
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6, Canada. marion.blute@utoronto.cahttp://individual.utoronto.ca/marionblute/

Abstract

Evolutionary socioecological theory and research proposing linking parasites with human social organization is uncommon and therefore welcome. However, more generally, condition-dependent adaptive phenotypic plasticity requires environmental uncertainty on a small scale, accompanied by reliable cues. In addition, genes in parasites may select among biologically adaptive cultural alternatives directly without necessarily going through human genetic predispositions, resulting in inter-specific gene-culture coevolution.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Blute, M. (1987) Biologists on sociocultural evolution: A critical analysis. Sociological Theory 5:185–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blute, M. (2006) Gene-culture coevolutionary games. Social Forces 85:151–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blute, M. (2010) Darwinian sociocultural evolution: Solutions to dilemmas in cultural and social theory. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. J. (1985) Culture and the evolutionary process. The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cavalli-Sforza, L. & Feldman, M. (1981) Cultural transmission and evolution: A quantitative approach. Princeton University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Durham, W. H. (1991) Coevolution: Genes, culture and human diversity. Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jost, J. T., Federico, C. M. & Napier, J. L. (2009) Political ideology: Its structure, functions, and elective affinities. Annual Review of Psychology 60:307–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laland, K. N. Odling-Smee, J. & Myles, K. (2010) How culture shaped the human genome: Bringing genetics and the human sciences together. Nature Reviews Genetics 11:137–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lumsden, C. J. & Wilson, E. O. (1981) Genes, mind and culture: The coevolutionary process. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Manolio, T. A., Collins, F. S., Cox, N. J., Goldstein, D. B., Hindorff, L. A., Hunter, D. J., McCarthy, M. I., Ramos, E. M., Cardon, L. R., Chakravarti, A., Cho, J. H., Guttmacher, A. E., Kong, A., Kruglyak, L., Mardis, E., Rotimi, C. N., Slatkin, M., Valle, D., Whittemore, A. S., Boehnke, M., Clark, A. G., Eichler, E. E., Gibson, G., Haines, J. L., Mackay, T. F. C., McCarroll, S. A. & Visscher, P. M. (2009) Finding the missing heritability of complex diseases. Nature 461:747–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roff, D. A. (2002) Life history evolution. Sinauer.Google Scholar