title: Humans are not cooperative breeders but practice biocultural reproduction.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Alloparental care and feeding of young is often called "cooperative breeding" and humans are increasingly described as being a cooperative breeding species.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To critically evaluate whether the human offspring care system is best grouped with that of other cooperative breeders.
  
  
  METHODS
  (1) Review of the human system of offspring care in the light of definitions of cooperative, communal and social breeding; (2) re-analysis of human lifetime reproductive effort.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Human reproduction and offspring care are distinct from other species because alloparental behaviour is defined culturally rather than by genetic kinship alone. This system allows local flexibility in provisioning strategies and ensures that care and resources often flow between unrelated individuals. This review proposes the term "biocultural reproduction" to describe this unique human reproductive system. In a re-analysis of human life history data, it is estimated that the intense alloparenting typical of human societies lowers the lifetime reproductive effort of individual women by 14-29% compared to expectations based upon other mammals.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Humans are not cooperative breeders as classically defined; one effect of the unique strategy of human biocultural reproduction is a lowering of human lifetime reproductive effort, which could help explain lifespan extension.
authors.affiliation: School of Sport, Exercise & Health Sciences, Loughborough University , Loughborough , UK and.
authors.forename: Barry
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bogin
authors.forename: Jared
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bragg
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kuzawa
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012098:Reproduction
keywords: Alloparenting; childhood; human life history; lifetime reproductive effort; longevity