Mate guarding in primates arises due to partner scarcity, even if the father provides no paternal care at all

Sex ratios and gender norms: why both are needed to understand sexual conflict in humans

“…Several scholars have suggested that male mate guarding preceded the evolution of pair bonding in mammals (Lukas & Clutton-Brock, 2013 ), and more specifically in humans (Schacht & Bell, 2016 ; Loo et al, 2017 ), but see Gavrilets ( 2012 ) for an alternative view. Loo et al ( 2021 ) hypothesize that mate guarding as a response to high sex ratios may have preceded the high level of paternal care common in callitrichids.…”

“…Several scholars have suggested that male mate guarding preceded the evolution of pair bonding in mammals (Lukas & Clutton-Brock, 2013), and more specifically in humans (Schacht & Bell, 2016;Loo et al, 2017), but see Gavrilets (2012) for an alternative view. Loo et al (2021) hypothesize that mate guarding as a response to high sex ratios may have preceded the high level of paternal care common in callitrichids. This summary of current research shows that biased sex ratios can drive sexual conflict by affecting the reproductive opportunities of individuals in the population and are an important source of bargaining power in situations of sexual conflict.…”

Life history impacts on infancy and the evolution of human social cognition

“…As longevity increases, the older age structure of the population includes not only postmenopausal women but also still-fertile old men. With more competitors, the strategy that wins more paternities shifts from competing for sequential conception possibilities with different partners, mating multiply, to claiming a mate and persistently guarding her (Hawkes and Coxworth, 2013;Coxworth et al, 2015;Schacht and Bell, 2016;Loo et al, 2017aLoo et al, ,b, 2020Loo et al, , 2021Rose et al, 2019). Pervasiveness of proprietary mate-guarding throughout ethnography and history has been widely recognized (e.g., Daly, 1992, 1993;Smuts, 1995;Hrdy, 1997;Mesnick, 1997;Wilson and Mesnick, 1997;Hawkes, 2004), although it has regularly been explained as protection against misdirecting paternal effort (e.g., Daly et al, 1982).…”

“…Yet that assumption of ubiquitous paternal support is undercut by facultative fathering (e.g., Hrdy, 2008) as well as male ontogeny and sexual dimorphism (e.g., Bribiescas, 2006;Puts, 2010, p. 161-163;and references therein) which indicate an evolutionary legacy of male mating competition that is directly inconsistent with a history of obligate paternal care. Instead, the male-biased sex ratio in the fertile ages that evolved with our grandmothering life history is a firmer foundation for the evolution of pair-bonding due to paternity advantages from persistent mate guarding (Coxworth et al, 2015;Loo et al, 2017aLoo et al, ,b, 2020Loo et al, , 2021.…”

The pregnancy compensation hypothesis, not the staying alive theory, accounts for disparate autoimmune functioning of women around the world

“…Increased longevity also shifts the sex ratio in the fertile ages from the female-bias typical of mammals to the male-bias in humans as proportions of both post-fertile women and older still-fertile men expand (Coxworth, Kim, McQueen, & Hawkes, 2015). When mating sex ratios are female-biased, males pursuing multiple mates gain more paternities; with the bias reversed, claiming and guarding a mate against other males wins more paternities (Loo, Chan, Hawkes, & Kim, 2017a;Loo, Hawkes, & Kim, 2017b;Loo, Weight, Hawkes, & Kim, 2020;Loo, Rose, Hawkes, & Kim, 2021;Rose, Hawkes, & Kim, 2019;Schacht & Bell, 2016).…”