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Adaptive Responses to Demographic Fragility: Mitigating Stochastic Effects in Early Island Colonization

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Abstract

This paper advances the debate regarding the social relations of prehistoric islanders beyond the dichotomy of isolation vs connectivity by proposing a general and cross-cultural model of adaptive behavioral responses to stochastically-forced demographic fragility. I show that smaller populations—more likely earlier in the settlement histories of islands—are more exposed to localized extinction via stochastic processes. To alleviate this greater degree of exposure, maintaining social links that allow for genetic flow between otherwise isolated populations should increase overall fitness. Conversely, as discrete populations expand, the imperative for access to a widely distributed metapopulation, and hence the need to maintain these links, should decrease. This is illustrated via simple network analysis. Potential venues for testing this general model are outlined; wider implications for the archaeology of colonization, and for spatial modeling of social interaction, are briefly discussed.

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Notes

  1. It is important to note that such alleviating strategies are a) context-dependent and b) may also exist to dampen deleterious effects as populations approach K (e.g., Bayliss-Smith 1974), not simply to increase initial robustness.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank John F. Cherry and Elizabeth A. Murphy for their thoughts on a version of the model developed in this paper, and John, Elizabeth, and Peter van Dommelen for constructive responses to an earlier draft of the paper itself. I am indebted to the Editor of Human Ecology, as well as to the two anonymous reviewers; not only for their generally considered and thoughtful comments on the article, but also for providing me with references to vital literature of which I was nonetheless previously unaware.

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The author declares that he has no conflict of interest.

The research presented in this paper did not involve Human Participants and/or Animals.

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  1. Center for Cultural Analysis, Rutgers, 640 Bartholomew Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA

    Thomas P. Leppard

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Correspondence to Thomas P. Leppard.

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Leppard, T.P. Adaptive Responses to Demographic Fragility: Mitigating Stochastic Effects in Early Island Colonization. Hum Ecol 43, 721–734 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-015-9779-4

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