Definition
Long-term pair-bonding occurs when one breeding male and one breeding female share a common territory, associating with each other for more than just one breeding season regardless of whether or not they currently have any offspring together. In humans, long-term pair-bonding can occur via monogamous or polygamous relationships.
Introduction
Humans have previously been called the “uniquely unique species” (Alexander 1990). Despite there being many different factors contributing to this uniqueness (e.g., the large brain), one of the most important is humans having a multi-male, multi-female social organization and a long-term pair-bonding mating system (Flinn et al. 2005; Geary and Flinn 2001; Hill et al. 2011). Most species living in groups composed of multiple males and multiple females are promiscuous, while most pair-bonded species live in groups comprised of only one male and one female. There are no...
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Rooker, K., Gavrilets, S. (2016). Evolution of Long-Term Pair-Bonding in Humans. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_99-1
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