Evolution of cannibalism: referring to costs of cannibalism

The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2011

Social Evolution & History, 2021

An increasing number of instances of cannibalism, while a relatively rare human behaviour, have come to light over the past 30 years. Forty years ago two anthropologists suggested that the limited nutritional value of cannibalism meant that primitive man could not have survived solely on human flesh. Recently an archaeologist tried to evaluate this suggestion. This paper broadens his analysis by linking Paleolithic cannibalism with an unnoticed analysis of the population dynamics of small hunter-gatherer groups among early man. It is argued that the synthesis of these two hypotheses provides additional explanations of why cannibalism was a sub-optimal survival strategy.

The American Naturalist, 2012

Ecological interactions determine the structure and dynamics of communities and their responses to the environment. Understanding the community-level effects of ecological interactions, such as intra-and interspecifc competition, predation, and cannibalism, is therefore central to ecological theory and ecosystem management. Here, we investigate the community-level consequences of cannibalism in populations with density-dependent maturation and reproduction. We model a stage-structured consumer population with an ontogenetic diet shift to analyze how cannibalism alters the conditions for the invasion and persistence of stage-specific predators and competitors. Our results demonstrate that cannibalistic interactions can facilitate coexistence with other species at both trophic levels. This effect of cannibalism critically depends on the food dependence of the demographic processes. The underlying mechanism is a cannibalism-induced shift in the biomass distribution between the consumer life stages. These findings suggest that cannibalism may alter the structure of ecological communities through its effects on species coexistence.

Ethnologies, 2007

Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. Érudit offre des services d'édition numérique de documents scientifiques depuis 1998. Note : les règles d'écriture des références bibliographiques peuvent varier selon les différents domaines du savoir.

… Agronomie, Société et …, 2009

Natural Resource Modeling, 2015

Cannibalism, which functions as a life history trait in at least 1,300 species of both invertebrates and vertebrates, plays important ecological and evolutionary roles in populations. During times of low resource availability, cannibalism of juveniles by adults can redirect reproductive energy to times of higher resource availability. For example, prolonged increases in sea surface temperature depress marine food webs and lead to increased egg cannibalism among glaucouswinged gulls (Larus glaucescens); consumption of a single cannibalized egg provides almost half the daily energy needs for an adult gull. Motivated by the glaucous-winged gull system, we use matrix models and bifurcation theory to investigate population and evolutionary dynamic consequences of adult-on-juvenile cannibalism. We show that, in the presence of cannibalism, a population can survive under circumstances of low resource availability which, in the absence of cannibalism, lead to extinction. The evolutionary version of the model shows that cannibalism can be an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS).

Mathematical Biosciences, 1983

A sequence of mathematical models for a species which engages in cannibalism are investigated.

Almost certainly in the prehistory of other times and places over the grand sweep of the human diaspora, other [s] . . . living on new and unknown landscapes, perhaps in relatively small, isolated groups, disappeared without issue or note in marginal environments or in the face of natural events beyond their capacity to cope.

Ecology, 2010

Theory and empirical studies suggest that cannibalism in age-structured populations can regulate recruitment depending on the intensity of intraspecific competition between cannibals and victims and the nature of the cannibalism window, i.e., which size classes interact as cannibals and victims. Here we report on a series of experiments that quantify that window for age-structured populations of salamander larvae and paedomorphic adults. We determined body size limits on cannibalism in microcosms and then the consumptive and nonconsumptive (injuries, foraging and activity, diet, growth) effects on victims in mesocosms with seminatural levels of habitat complexity and alternative prey. We found that cannibalism by the largest size classes (paedomorphs and !age 3þ yr larvae) occurs mainly on young-of-the-year (YOY) victims. Surviving YOY and other small larvae had increased injuries, reduced activity levels, and reduced growth rates in the presence of cannibals. Data on YOY survival in an experiment in which we manipulated the density of paedomorphs combined with historical data on the number of cannibals in natural populations indicate that dominant cohorts of paedomorphs can cause observed recruitment failures. Dietary data indicate that ontogenetic shifts in diet should preclude strong intraspecific competition between YOY and cannibals in this species. Thus our results are consistent with previous empirical and theoretical work that suggests that recruitment regulation by cannibalism is most likely when YOY are vulnerable to cannibalism but have low dietary overlap with cannibals. Understanding the role of cannibalism in regulating recruitment in salamander populations is timely, given the widespread occurrences of amphibian decline. Previous studies have focused on extrinsic (including anthropogenic) factors that affect amphibian population dynamics, whereas the data presented here combined with long-term field observations suggest the potential for intrinsically driven population cycles.

Science, 1996

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