Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Does Mother Nature Punish Rotten Kids?, Ted Bergstrom, Carl Bergstrom

Ted C Bergstrom

The theory of parent-offspring conflict predicts that mothers and their offspring may not agree about how resources should be allocated among family members. A kid, for example, may favor a later weaning date than does its mother. Despite the mother's physical superiority, it may be that the kid is able to manipulate her behavior. In this paper, we investigate a two-locus population genetic model of weaning conflict in which offspring can attempt to extort resources from their parents by reducing their own chances of survival if their demands are not met. We find that the frequency of recombination between the …