When low-status males have no chance of accessing females via traditional routes such as fighting or signalling their prowess, they may attempt more deceptive means of getting a mate. As an example, some male fish take advantage of the external fertilisation of eggs by hiding on the periphery of the courting male’s territory, including in some cases disguising themselves as females. When the eggs are released, they rush in and attempt to fertilise them.

Links this week (or two): This Is Your Brain on Gluten. A good paleo related read. Epigenetics and the root of aggressive behaviour. A new book coming from Gregory Clark - The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility (And another Hemingway pun title). The Evolution Institute’s annual report. Full of interesting links.

As is my habit, each year I give a list of the best books I have read during the year. I tend not to focus on the newest releases, so most of the list was not published this year. In no particular order: Paul Frijters and Gigi Foster’s An Economic Theory of Greed, Love, Groups, and Networks (see also here): I don’t buy into many of the arguments, but the most interesting book I read all year.

Links this week: Matt Ridley on intelligence and social mobility. There is a lot to like about this paper: Cultural transmission and the evolution of human behaviour: a general approach based on the Price equation. I’ll post more about it later. Andrew Gelman on the backlash against replication. The 15 best behavioural science graphs of 2010 to 2013.

In a new article by Eduardo Undurraga and colleagues (HT: Neuroskeptic): Math skills and market and non-market outcomes: Evidence from an Amazonian society of forager-farmers. Research in industrial nations suggests that formal math skills are associated with improvements in market and non-market outcomes. But do these associations also hold in a highly autarkic setting with a limited formal labor market? We examined this question using observational annual panel data (2008 and 2009) from 1,121 adults in a native Amazonian society of forager-farmers in Bolivia (Tsimane’).

Links this week: Barry Kuhle posts about On the origin of Human Behavior & Evolution Society, an oral history project. Part I and Part II. Lots of great interviews in each post. David Dobbs tweaks his critique of the selfish gene. Mark Buchanan takes on the idea of “learning” in the economics literature.

From Richard Posner (HT: Ryan Murphy): [Behavioral economics] is undertheorized because of its residual, and in consequence purely empirical, character. Behavioral economics is defined by its subject rather than by its method and its subject is merely the set of phenomena that the most elementary, stripped down rational-choice models do not explain. It would not be surprising if many of these phenomena turned out to be unrelated to each other, just as the set of things that are not edible by man include stones, toadstools, thunder-claps, and the Pythagorean theorem.

Links this week: David Dobbs takes on the Selfish Gene. Dawkins responds (as does Jerry Coyne, three times). I’m generally with Dawkins and Coyne on the theme (if not every detail) of this argument. I’d go as far to say that I wish the selfish gene concept would make a comeback in some areas. Martin Nowak and E.O Wilson, this time with Ben Allen, have launched another broadside at inclusive fitness.

An interesting idea in Herb Gintis’s review of The Origin of Wealth (pdf): One of the ironies of history is that if the Walrasian model were plausible, there would be no need for real markets, real competition, or even capitalism itself. Socialism, consisting of a bureau of technocrats implementing the Walrasian auctioneer, could harness the general equilibrium system to a system of public ownership of wealth. This aspect of the general equilibrium model was clearly understood by Oskar Lange, F.

In the academic literature at the intersection of economics and evolutionary biology, evolution of time preference (patience) is one area that has received much attention. This makes some sense, as most economic models that consider decisions over time include time preference. Time preference is normally included in the model through a discount rate of a fixed value, so an evolutionary analysis might help in determining what that value is. One of the first articles to ask what rate of time preference might be expected to evolve was by Ingemar Hansson and Charles Stuart, who examined the intergenerational rate of time preference.