Douglas Bird

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at Pennsylvania State University

Commensal relationships between wild plants and their dispersers play a key ecological and evolutionary role in community structure and function. While non-human dispersers are often considered critical to plant recruitment, human dispersers have received much less attention, especially when it comes to non-domesticated plants. Australia, as a cont...

An important adaptive problem for humans and other animals is the acquisition of food. To study foraging strategies, human behavioral ecologists use a number of optimization models, which generally assume that individuals aim to maximize the rate at which they acquire resources. For instance, the prey choice model and its variants highlight the res...

Interpreting Pleistocene foragers by analogy with ethnographic hunter-gatherers can be tricky because the former lived in climatic circumstances and at population densities unlike the latter. Our challenge is to use theoretically informed predictions, validated by ethnographic observations, to recognize past behavior that may fall outside the range...

Explaining variation in hunter-gatherer livelihoods hinges on our ability to predict the tradeoffs and opportunities of pursuing different kinds of prey. Central to this problem is the commonly held assumption that larger animals provide higher returns upon encounter than smaller ones. However, to test this assumption, actualistic observations of h...

Humans have influenced global fire activity for millennia and will continue to do so into the future. Given the long-term interaction between humans and fire, we propose a collaborative research agenda linking archaeology and fire science that emphasizes the socioecological histories and consequences of anthropogenic fire in the development of fire...

Explaining variation in hunter-gatherer livelihoods hinges on our ability to predict the tradeoffs and opportunities of pursuing different kinds of prey. Central to this problem is the commonly held assumption that larger animals provide higher returns upon encounter than smaller ones. However, to test this assumption, actualistic observations of h...

Objective Climate change has long been recognized as a significant driver of dietary diversity and dietary quality. An often overlooked aspect of climate change are shifts in fire regimes, which have the potential to drastically affect landscape diversity, species distributions, and ultimately, human diets. Here, we investigate whether the fire reg...

In the archeological record, the presence of smaller-bodied species is often assumed to indicate a decline in higher-ranked, larger-bodied prey and broadening of the diet to include lower-ranked items with higher handling costs. This shift is typically considered to be a product of a "broad spectrum revolution" that gave rise in many regions to inc...

Human adaptation depends on the integration of slow life history, complex production skills, and extensive sociality. Refining and testing models of the evolution of human life history and cultural learning benefit from increasingly accurate measurement of knowledge, skills, and rates of production with age. We pursue this goal by inferring hunters...

Significance Models of human habitat choice and landscape use assume that people have negative effects on resource availability, which causes them to avoid regions that are already occupied or that show signs of extensive past use in favor of regions of higher quality. We show that when people engage in activities that increase resource productivit...

Mobile hunter-gatherers are often characterized as living in small communities where mobility and group size are products of the environmentally determined distribution of resources, and where social organization is multi-scalar: groups of co-residents are nested within small communities that are, in turn, nested within small-scale societies. Such...

The Australian desert ecosystem coevolved with humans over the course of fifty millennia, yet our understanding of the place of humans within the ecosystem is only now beginning to deepen; recent research suggests that the removal of Aboriginal people from homelands precipitated rapid ecosystem remodeling. We suggest that network-based approaches a...

Human adaptation depends upon the integration of slow life history, complex production skills, and extensive sociality. Refining and testing models of the evolution of human life history and cultural learning will benefit from increasingly accurate measurement of knowledge, skills, and rates of production with age. We pursue this goal by inferring...

The Australian desert ecosystem coevolved with humans over the course of fifty millennia, yet our understanding of the place of humans within the ecosystem is only now beginning to deepen; recent research suggests that the removal of Aboriginal people from homelands precipitated rapid ecosystem remodeling. We suggest that network-based approaches a...

The primacy of past human activity in triggering change in earth’s ecosystems remains a contested idea. Treating human-environmental dynamics as a dichotomous phenomenon – turning “on” or “off” at some tipping point in the past – misses the broader, longer-term, and varied role humans play in creating lasting ecological legacies. To investigate the...

The Altiplano constitutes the most extensive, high-elevation terrain in South America. Most archaeological research on the earliest human occupation of this region in the Bolivian Andes derives from sites such as Viscachani where the emphasis has been on typological comparisons of projectile points, rather than on complete and radiometrically dated...

Both invasive mesopredators and altered fire regimes impact populations of vulnerable native species. Understanding how these forces interact is critical for designing better conservation measures for endangered species. This study draws on Indigenous ecological knowledge and practice to explore heterogeneity in faunal responses to Indigenously man...

In arid Australia, the antiquity, role and ecological contexts of ‘firestick’ farming in seed-based foraging economies remain unclear. We use Landsat imagery to analyse effects of contemporary Martu hunting fires on seed-bearing grasses and forbs. Today, Martu rarely harvest wild seeds but inadvertently foster patches of grass when they burn to hun...

Due to our intensive subsistence and habitat-modification strategies—including broad-spectrum harvesting and predation, widespread landscape burning, settlement construction, and translocation of other species—humans have major roles as ecological actors who influence fundamental trophic interactions. Here we review how the long-term history of hum...

Southern and northwestern Africa have provided the oldest known shell middens, dating from the Last Interglacial (MIS 5, ∼128–71 ka) and the early part of the succeeding glaciation (MIS 4, ∼71–59 ka). However, when and if older, suitably situated, stratified coastal sites are found, they are likely to show that routine shellfishing began much earli...

James F. O’Connell is one of the most influential ethnoarchaelogists, especially so for his contributions to the development of behavioral ecology in anthropology. His scholarship in Australian archaeology and his ethnographic work with Hadza hunter-gatherers are probably best known. However, his intellectual development in the archaeology of Weste...

Archaeological investigations of hunter-gatherer site structure have remained largely descriptive, despite significant explanatory advancements by evolutionary approaches to foraging behavior and ecology. To date, calls to incorporate site structure studies within this behavioral ecological framework have largely been ignored. We suggest there is a...

While evidence mounts that indigenous burning has a significant role in shaping pyrodiversity, the processes explaining its variation across local and external biophysical systems remain limited. This is especially the case with studies of climate–fire interactions, which only recognize an effect of humans on the fire regime when they act independe...

Aboriginal foraging systems in Australia’s Western Desert have been structured around landscape-burning practices for millennia. These systems are mediated at one end by factors that influence an immediate-return economy and at the other by the way that burning transforms vegetative succession and habitat heterogeneity (pyrodiversity). The distinct...

The Anthropocene colloquially refers to a global regime of human-caused environmental modification of earth systems associated with profound changes in patterns of human mobility, as well as settlement and resource use compared with prior eras. Some have argued that the processes generating the Anthropocene are mainly associated with population gro...

Keywords: Broad spectrum revolution Foraging theory Marginal Value Theorem Seed use Martu Western Australia Last Glacial Maximum Sexual division of labor Ground stone a b s t r a c t Seed-reliant, hunting and gathering economies persisted in arid Australia until the mid-twentieth century when Aboriginal foragers dropped seeds from their diets. Expl...

Studies of conservation in small scale societies typically portray indigenous peoples as either sustainably managing resources, or forsaking long-term sustainability for short-term gains. To explain this variability, we propose an alternative framework derived from a co-evolutionary perspective. In environments with long histories of consistent int...

Species that are strong interactors play disproportionately important roles in the dynamics of natural ecosystems. It has been proposed that their presence is necessary for positively shaping the structure and functioning of ecosystems. We evaluated this hypothesis using the case of the world's largest parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum), a globall...

Shellfish are a crucial resource for past and present subsistence-level societies around the world. Despite the diversity of environments in which shellfish are exploited, an examination of the global patterns of shellfish exploitation reveal surprisingly common patterns in the opportunities allowed and constraints imposed by relying on shellfish....

Archaeological evidence of shellfish exploitation along the coast of Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea) points to an apparent paradox. While the continental record as a whole suggests that human populations were very low from initial colonization through early Holocene, coastal and peri-coastal sites dating to that time are dominated by small...

Foraging models have rarely been used to address how behavior is altered by the presence of non-foraged foods. Here, choices of store-bought and hunted foods in one Aboriginal community are analyzed. Hunting occurs frequently, but community residents also purchase food from the shop. Increases in the frequency of hunting certain large and small pre...

Anthropogenic fire is a form of ecosystem engineering that creates greater landscape patchiness at small spatial scales: such rescaling of patch diversity through mosaic burning has been argued to be a form of niche construction, the loss of which may have precipitated the decline and extinction of many endemic species in the Western Desert of Aust...

In this paper, we attempt to understand hunter-gatherer foraging decisions about prey that vary in both the mean and variance of energy return using an expected utility framework. We show that for skewed distributions of energetic returns, the standard linear variance discounting (LVD) model for risk-sensitive foraging can produce quite misleading...

Archaeologists often assume that large ungulates are inherently highly ranked prey because of their size, especially attractive to hunters using sophisticated capture technologies common after the late Pleistocene. Between 1840 and 1907, over 10,000 dromedary camels were imported to Australia, and today feral populations number well over a million....

Across diverse ecosystems, greater climatic variability tends to increase wildfire size, particularly in Australia, where alternating wet-dry cycles increase vegetation growth, only to leave a dry overgrown landscape highly susceptible to fire spread. Aboriginal Australian hunting fires have been hypothesized to buffer such variability, mitigating...

Cooperative hunting is often assumed to be mutualistic, maintained through returns to scale, where, by working together, foragers can gain higher per capita return rates or harvest sizes than they can by hunting alone. We test this hypothesis among Martu hunters and find that cooperation only provides increased returns to poorer hunters while disad...

We recently demonstrated that prey size is not a reliable predictor of post-encounter return rates for resources Martu hunters regularly handle in Australia's Western Desert (Bird et al. 2009). Ugan and Simms are skeptical of our calculations of these returns, especially in our inclusion of tracking as pursuit time. Here we review how these variabl...

Commenting on our recent paper [[1][1]], Koster [[2][2]] questions the way we represent Ache foraging. Unfortunately, Koster's critique misses the main point of our paper and instead proposes a paradox where Ache hunting is at once high-risk and reliable. We reluctantly respond to these criticisms

Offspring provisioning is commonly referenced as the most important influence on men's and women's foraging decisions. However, the provisioning of other adults may be equally important in determining gender differences in resource choice, particularly when the goals of provisioning offspring versus others cannot be met with the acquisition of the...

Even though the central role of fire in the terrestrial biodiversity of Australia is widely acknowledged, we have a limited understanding of the factors that determine the decisions that Aborigines make in maintaining landscape burning regimes (see review in Bowman 1998, pp. 389-390). Discussions of Aboriginal firing practices have generally focuse...

Researchers commonly use long-term average production inequalities to characterize cross-cultural patterns in foraging divisions of labor, but little is known about how the strategies of individuals shape such inequalities. Here, we explore the factors that lead to daily variation in how much men produce relative to women among Martu, contemporary...

Researchers commonly use long-term average production inequalities to characterize cross-cultural patterns in foraging divisions of labor, but little is known about how the strategies of individuals shape such inequalities. Here, we explore the factors that lead to daily variation in how much men produce relative to women among Martu, contemporary...

By integrating foraging models developed in behavioral ecology with measures of variability in faunal remains, zooarchaeological studies have made important contributions toward understanding prehistoric resource use and the dynamic interactions between humans and their prey. However, where archaeological studies are unable to quantify the costs an...

By integrating foraging models developed in behavioral ecology with measures of variability in faunal remains, zooarchaeological studies have made important contributions toward understanding prehistoric resource use and the dynamic interactions between humans and their prey. However, where archaeological studies are unable to quantify the costs an...

Aboriginal burning in Australia has long been assumed to be a “resource management” strategy, but no quantitative tests of this hypothesis have ever been conducted. We combine ethnographic observations of contemporary Aboriginal hunting and burning with satellite image analysis of anthropogenic and natural landscape structure to demonstrate the pro...

An old anthropological theory ascribes gender differences in hunter-gatherer subsistence to an economy of scale in household economic production: women pursue child-care-compatible tasks and men, of necessity, provision wives and offspring with hunted meat. This theory explains little about the division of labor among the Australian Martu, where wo...

Archaeology is ultimately concerned with explaining variability in the patterns of past human behavior. This chapter illustrates how archaeologically falsifiable hypotheses derived from the neo-Darwinian framework of behavioral ecology can serve this goal. Most archaeological applications of this approach have focused on explaining differences in t...

Behavioral ecology is the study of adaptive behavior in relation to social and environmental circumstances. Analysts working from this perspective hold that the reproductive strategies and decision-making capacities of all living organisms—including humans—are shaped by natural selection. Archaeologists have been using this proposition in the study...

The emergence of the genus Homo is widely linked to the colonization of 'new' highly seasonal savannah habitats. However, until recently, our understanding of the possible impact of seasonality on this shift has been limited because we have little general knowledge of how seasonality affects the lives of primates. This 2005 book documents the exten...

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A large complement of Australia’s biotic web is dependent on a regular regime of burning, much of which is the result of firing by humans. Many researchers have suggested that moderate and repeated burning by Aborigines is a tool designed to enhance hunting efficiency. We present the first test of this with data on contemporary Martu Aboriginal bur...

Hunting, particularly when it involves large game that is extensively shared, has been suggested to serve as a form of costly signaling by hunters, serving to attract mates and allies or to deter competitors. Empirical evidence presented elsewhere on turtle hunting practiced by Meriam people of Torres Strait, Australia, supports several key predict...

Foragers who do not practice food storage might adapt to fluctuating food supplies by sharing surplus resources in times of plenty with the expectation of receiving in times of shortfall. In this paper, we derive a number of predictions from this perspective, which we term the risk reduction reciprocity (RRR) model, and test these with ethnographic...

Meriam children are active reef-flat collectors. We demonstrate that while foraging on the reef, children are significantly less selective than adults. This difference and the precise nature of children’s selectivity while reef-flat collecting are consistent with a hypothesis that both children and adults attempt to maximize their rate of return wh...

Recent theoretical models suggest that the difference between human and nonhuman primate life-history patterns may be due to a reliance on complex foraging strategies requiring extensive learning. These models predict that children should reach adult levels of efficiency faster when foraging is cognitively simple. We test this prediction with data...

Archaeologists have traditionally assumed that proportional variability in the types of shellfish remains found in middens can directly inform arguments about prehistoric coastal and island diets. We explore this assumption by comparing an analysis of three shellmidden sites on the Meriam Islands (eastern Torres Strait, Australia) with data on cont...

Humans sometimes forage or distribute the products of foraging in ways that do not maximize individual energetic return rates. As an alternative to hypotheses that rely on reciprocal altruism to counter the costs of inefficiency, we suggest that the cost itself could be recouped through signal benefit. Costly signaling theory predicts that signals...

Recognizing children's contribution to the archaeological record may be crucial for our ideas about the role of children in human evolution. Despite this, analyses of children's activities and how they might shape archaeological patterns are almost entirely absent from discussions about site formation processes. This may in turn result from the ass...

Models derived from behavioral ecology may have the potential to explain a great deal of variability in food-sharing patterns within and between human societies. We use quantitative observational data on the sharing of large animal prey among the Meriam of the Torres Strait to test specific predictions of reciprocity-based and tolerated-theft shari...

This paper explores a central place foraging model with data on Meriam intertidal shellfish gathering strategies, field processing practices, patterns of resource transport, and consequences of these factors for introducing variability in shell assemblage composition among these Islanders of the eastern Torres Strait, Australia. As a result of diff...

Degree granted in Anthropology. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Davis, 1996.