Sylvain Viguier

Zühlke

Among vertebrates, allomothering (non-maternal care) is classified as cooperative breeding (help from sexually mature non-breeders, usually close relatives) or communal breeding (shared care between multiple breeders who are not necessarily related). Humans have been described with both labels, most frequently as cooperative breeders. However, few...

Women cooperate over multiple domains and while research from western contexts portrays women's networks as limited in size and breadth, women receive help, particularly with childcare, from a diverse range of individuals (allomothers). Nonetheless, little exploration has occurred into why we see such diversity. Wide maternal childcare networks may...

Ancestral humans evolved a complex social structure still observed in extant hunter-gatherers. Here we investigate the effects of extensive sociality and mobility on the oral microbiome of 138 Agta hunter-gatherers from the Philippines. Comparisons of microbiome composition showed that the Agta are more similar to Central African Bayaka hunter-gath...

Ecological and genetic factors have influenced the composition of the human microbiome during our evolutionary history. We analyzed the oral microbiota of the Agta, a hunter-gatherer population where part of its members is adopting an agricultural diet. We show that age is the strongest factor modulating the microbiome, likely through immunosenesce...

Worldwide mothers receive help with childcare from a diverse range of individuals (allomothers). Nonetheless, little exploration has occurred into why we see such diversity, such as different strategies used to buffer risk. Wide maternal childcare networks may be a consequence of situations of little material wealth and food storage - as is common...

Non-maternal carers (allomothers) are hypothesized to lighten the mother's workload, allowing for the specialized human life history including relatively short interbirth intervals and multiple dependent offspring. Here, using in-depth observational data on childcare provided to 78 Agta children (a foraging population in the northern Philippines; a...

Although multilevel sociality is a universal feature of human social organization, its functional relevance remains unclear. Here, we investigated the effect of multilevel sociality on cumulative cultural evolution by using wireless sensing technology to map inter-and intraband social networks among Agta hunter-gatherers. By simulating the accumula...

Human children are frequently cared for by non-parental caregivers (alloparents), yet few studies have conducted systematic alternative hypothesis tests of why alloparents help. Here we explore whether predictions from kin selection, reciprocity, learning-to-mother and costly signalling hypotheses explain non-parental childcare among Agta hunter-ga...

Non-maternal caregivers (allomothers) are hypothesised to lighten the mother’s workload, producing human’s specialised life history where multiple dependent offspring are produced over a relatively short time period. Here, using in-depth observational data on who for cares for 78 Agta children (aged 0-6 years, a foraging population in northern Phil...

Many hunter-gatherer groups live on the outskirts of wider society, experiencing poor health outcomes with little access to medical care. From a development perspective, key interventions include the sedentarisation of these mobile peoples into camps nearby larger towns with sanitation infrastructure and medical care, as increased access to service...

The Cave of Sounds is an interactive sound installation formed of eight new musical instruments exploring what it means to create instruments together. Each instrument was created by an individual but with the aim of forming a part of this new ensemble, with the final installation debuting at the Barbican in London in August 2013. In this paper, we...

Individuals’ centrality in their social network (who they and their social ties are connected to) has been associated with fertility, longevity, disease and information transmission in a range of taxa. Here, we present the first exploration in humans of the relationship between reproductive success and different measures of network centrality of 39...

Social networks in modern societies are highly structured, usually involving frequent contact with a small number of unrelated ‘friends’ 1 . However, contact network structures in traditional small-scale societies, especially hunter-gatherers, are poorly characterized. We developed a portable wireless sensing technology (motes) to study within-camp...

Poster presentation at AAPA 2016 symposium ’Biocultural Perspectives of Family Health’

The Neolithic demographic transition remains a paradox, because it is associated with both higher rates of population growth and increased morbidity and mortality rates. Here we reconcile the conflicting evidence by proposing that the spread of agriculture involved a life history quality–quantity trade-off whereby mothers traded offspring survival...

Are interactions with unrelated and even unknown individuals a by-product of modern life in megacities? Here we argue instead that social ties among non-kin are a crucial human adaptation. By deploying a new portable wireless sensing technology (motes), we mapped social networks in Agta and BaYaka hunter-gatherers in unprecedented detail. We show t...

Presentation about the relationship between sedentism and helminthic burden in modern day foragers.