Papers by Luis Pacheco-Cobos
Mushrooming GPS-tracks 2015-2017
Figshare, 2023
Women’s subsistence strategies predict fertility across cultures, but context matters
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Feb 12, 2024
The Effects of Households and Labor Requirements on Intracommunity Boundary Formation, Settlement Choices, and Neighborhood Functions in Modern and Prehistoric Communities
The 84th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, 2019
Economic benefits of hunting dogs in the context of tropical horticulture
The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, 2015
Ethnographic Observations on the Role of Domestic Dogs in the Lowland Tropics of Belize with Emphasis on Crop Protection and Subsistence Hunting
Human Ecology, Oct 13, 2021
Beyond their paths
Hunter Gatherer Research
Reproductive inequality in humans and other mammals
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
To address claims of human exceptionalism, we determine where humans fit within the greater mamma... more To address claims of human exceptionalism, we determine where humans fit within the greater mammalian distribution of reproductive inequality. We show that humans exhibit lower reproductive skew (i.e., inequality in the number of surviving offspring) among males and smaller sex differences in reproductive skew than most other mammals, while nevertheless falling within the mammalian range. Additionally, female reproductive skew is higher in polygynous human populations than in polygynous nonhumans mammals on average. This patterning of skew can be attributed in part to the prevalence of monogamy in humans compared to the predominance of polygyny in nonhuman mammals, to the limited degree of polygyny in the human societies that practice it, and to the importance of unequally held rival resources to women’s fitness. The muted reproductive inequality observed in humans appears to be linked to several unusual characteristics of our species—including high levels of cooperation among males...
Modelling encounter-conditional search using annotated GPS tracking data
Folia Primatologica, 2020
SupplementaryMaterial_EP for Human Foragers: Searchers by Nature and Experience by César Maya, Ma... more SupplementaryMaterial_EP for Human Foragers: Searchers by Nature and Experience by César Maya, Marcos F. Rosetti, Luis Pacheco-Cobos and Robyn Hudson in Evolutionary Psychology
Economic benefits of hunting dogs in the context of tropical horticulture
The effects in a Maya community of school enrollment on young adult time allocation to activities dependent on traditional ecological knowledge
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019
We develop a method of analysis for testing the marginal value theorem (MVT) in natural settings ... more We develop a method of analysis for testing the marginal value theorem (MVT) in natural settings that does not require an independent definition or mapping of patches. We draw on recent theoretical work on area-restricted search (ARS) that links turning-angle and step-size changes to geographically localized encounter-rates. These models allow us to estimate “giving-up times” using encounter-annotated GPS tracking data. Applied to a case study of Nahua mushroom foragers, these models identify distinct forms of intrapatch and interpatch search behavior, with intrapatch search transitioning to interpatch search after a predictable interval of time since the last encounter with a harvested mushroom. Our empirical estimate of giving-up time coincides with the theoretically optimal giving-up time derived under the MVT in the same environment. The MVT is currently underused in studies of human foraging and settlement patterns, due in large part to the difficulty of identifying discrete re...
Evolutionary Psychology, 2019
Diverse studies of human foraging have revealed behavioral strategies that may have evolved as ad... more Diverse studies of human foraging have revealed behavioral strategies that may have evolved as adaptations for foraging. Here, we used an outdoor experimental search task to explore the effect of three sources of information on participants’ performance: (i) information obtained directly from performing a search, (ii) information obtained prior to testing in the form of a distilled snippet of knowledge intended to experimentally simulate information acquired culturally about the environment, and (iii) information obtained from experience of foraging for natural resources for economic gain. We found that (i) immediate searching experience improved performance from the beginning to the end of the short, 2-min task, (ii) information priming improved performance notably from the very beginning of the task, and (iii) natural resource foraging experience improved performance to a lesser extent. Our results highlight the role of culturally transmitted information as well as the presence of...
ABSTRACTHuman adaptation depends upon the integration of slow life history, complex production sk... more ABSTRACTHuman adaptation depends upon the integration of slow life history, complex production skills, and extensive sociality. Refining and testing models of the evolution of human life history and cultural learning will benefit from increasingly accurate measurement of knowledge, skills, and rates of production with age. We pursue this goal by inferring individual hunters’ of hunting skill gain and loss from approximately 23,000 hunting records generated by more than 1,800 individuals at 40 locations. The model provides an improved picture of ages of peak productivity as well as variation within and among ages. The data reveal an average age of peak productivity between 30 and 35 years of age, though high skill is maintained throughout much of adulthood. In addition, there is substantial variation both among individuals and sites. Within study sites, variation among individuals depends more upon heterogeneity in rates of decline than in rates of increase. This analysis sharpens qu...
Journal of theoretical biology, Jan 14, 2018
A theoretical and applied literature has suggested that foragers search using Lévy flights, since... more A theoretical and applied literature has suggested that foragers search using Lévy flights, since Lévy flights can maximize the efficiency of search in the absence of information on the location of randomly distributed prey. Foragers, however, often have available to them at least some information about the distribution of prey, gained either through evolved mechanisms, experience and memory, or social transmission of information. As such, we might expect selection for heuristics that make use of such information to further improve the efficiency of random search. Here we present a general model of random search behavior that includes as special cases: area-restricted search, correlated random walks, Brownian search, and Lévy flights. This generative model allows foragers to adjust search parameters based on encounter-conditional and other heuristics. Using a simulation model, we demonstrate the efficiency gains of these search heuristics, and illustrate the resulting differences in...
Micológia Aplicada …, 2009
The study of human foraging behavior is relevant for social anthropology and behavioral ecology, ... more The study of human foraging behavior is relevant for social anthropology and behavioral ecology, because it makes it possible to study directly the relationship between human communities and the forest resources they use and manage. The recording of individual search pathways in the field has improved, in recent years, due to the availability of satellite technologies like the Global Positioning System (GPS). The present study was carried out in a Nahua community in Tlaxcala, Mexico, where wild fungi constitute an important source of food and income. We discuss different methods used to record foraging paths in humans as well as the spatial location of fungi gathered. Likewise, we mention the difficulties and procedures we have found useful in overcoming them. The best recordings were obtained when the GPS device was: 1) Programmed to record geographical position by time rather than distance intervals; 2) Carried by the researcher; and 3) Used to mark the sites in the forest where fungi were collected. Although the sample size explored was small, we believe that the analysis of the paths obtained using this method can provide insights into the decisions that underlie the foraging patterns of humans, as well as the possible relation between these and the spatial distribution of fungi.
Biodiversity and Conservation, 2015
Monitoring wild edible fungi over long periods is essential to understand how environmental or cu... more Monitoring wild edible fungi over long periods is essential to understand how environmental or cultural factors influence fruiting patterns. Since conventional sampling methods are time and resource intensive, alternatives providing reliable ecological information could be useful for assessments of fungal management. Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) can be used as a sampling alternative in a cost-effective manner. Thus, in this paper we aim to: (1) illustrate how GPS-recorded information on mushroom gatherers' pathways can be used to describe fungal diversity and distribution patterns, and (2) outline a TEK-monitoring proposal that can provide communities and researchers with high-quality ecological data on edible mushrooms. Using information from 32 trips (55 GPS-tracked pathways) we were able to describe the frequency, abundance, diversity and spatial distribution of edible fungi at different sites. We recorded the collection of 6,905 sporocarps, representing 20 species and 6 genera, which were collected or identified at Communicated by David Hawksworth.
Population and Environmental Correlates of Maize Yields in Mesoamerica: a Test of Boserup’s Hypothesis in the Milpa
Human Ecology, 2015
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Papers by Luis Pacheco-Cobos