Reciprocal altruism, rather than kin selection, maintains nepotistic food transfers on an Ache reservation

Cooperation among relatives is often regarded as evidence of kill selection. Yet altruism not requiring shared genes call also evolve among relatives. If characteristics of relatives (such as proximity, familiarity, or trust) make kill preferred social partners, the primary causes Of nepotistic biases may reside principally in direct fitness payoffs from cooperation rather than indirect fitness payoffs acquired from aiding collateral kill. We consider the roles of kin selection and reciprocal altruism in maintaining nepotistic food transfers oil ail Ache reservation ill northeastern Paraguay. Households do not primarily direct aid to related households that receive larger comparative marginal gains from food intake as we would predict Under kill selection theory. Instead, (1) food transfers favor household characterized by lower relative net energy production values irrespective of kinship ties, (2) households display significant positive correlations ill amounts exchanged with each other, suggesting contingency in food transfers, and (3) kinship interacts with these positive correlations in amounts households exchange With each other, indicating even stronger contingency in sharing among related households than among unrelated households. While kill are preferred recipients of food aid, food distributions favor kill that have given more to the distributing household in the past rather than kill that would benefit more from the aid. Such discrimination among kill accord, better with reciprocal altruism theory than with kill selection theory. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.