Timothy Michael Waring

Addressing sustainability challenges requires an integrative approach that bridges scientific research with practical application. The field of cultural evolution (CE) offers a perspective that may guide transitions and cultural transformations for a sustainable future. However, there have been few efforts to apply this field to sustainability challenges. This study explores how CE can inform sustainability practices through mechanisms of social learning, processes of cultural adaptation and conditions that promote cooperative governance. Through a two-phase research design—comprising online discussions with professionals from six domains, and an international workshop—we examined the perceived benefits, challenges and opportunities for applying CE in real-world contexts. Our findings indicate that professionals recognize CE’s potential to enhance knowledge dissemination, foster adaptation to social–ecological changes, improve governance structures and generate cooperation. However, barriers such as complex terminology, unfamiliarity with CE, the lack of clear, context-specific evidence of added value and competition with existing frameworks hinder its application. To overcome these challenges, we propose simplifying CE concepts, demonstrating its unique contributions, and continuing to foster co-production with practitioners to refine its applicability. This study is an initial step in building an applied science of CE that can support sustainability transformations across diverse domains. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Transforming cultural evolution research and its application to global futures’.

Previous research on a transition in human evolution has been befuddled by the complexity of adaptive culture and made little effort toward empirical tests. We resolve these problems with a novel and testable theoretical mechanism. First, we explain how a differential in adaptive capacity between genetic and cultural inheritance could drive an evolutionary transition in both inheritance and individuality (ETII). We elaborate the ETII hypothesis and show it can resolve the prior debates, such as why genetic group selection is not a necessary precondition to transition. Next, we develop quantitative metrics of evolutionary transition in both phenotype and fitness to measure movement along this transition. We evaluate available evidence and find that patterns in gene–culture coevolution lend credence to the possibility of an ongoing transition. Finally, we derive a set of testable predictions and outline an agenda for future research.

Evolutionary scientists argue that prosociality has been central to human ecological success. Theoretical models and behavioural experiments have found that prosociality, and cooperation in particular, is conditional and context dependent, that individuals vary in their propensity to cooperate, and that reciprocity stabilizes these behaviours within groups. Experimental findings have had limited validation with observations of behaviour in natural settings, especially in organizational contexts. Here, we report in situ measurements of collective action, which show that reciprocity is abundant in organizations embedded in a cash economy. We study small ‘food clubs’, where members share bulk purchases and are considered to be heavily dependent on cooperation. We use high-resolution data on the economic interactions of 1,528 individuals across 35 clubs and over a combined 107 years of operation. We develop a network method to detect different directional and temporal forms of economic reciprocity, and statistically classify individual behavioural types akin to those in experiments. We find abundant direct reciprocity, supplemented by indirect reciprocity, and that members of most clubs can be identified as consistent reciprocators. This study provides initial observational evidence that economic reciprocity may be more abundant in real-world settings, sharpening the findings of the behavioural study of cooperation and contributing to the more naturalistic study of reciprocity and prosociality.

Crop switching, in which farmers grow a crop that is novel to a given field, can help agricultural systems adapt to changing environmental, cultural, and market forces. Yet while regional crop production trends receive significant attention, relatively little is known about the local-scale crop switching that underlies these macrotrends. We characterized local crop-switching patterns across the United States using the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Cropland Data Layer, an annual time series of high resolution (30 m pixel size) remote-sensed cropland data from 2008 to 2022. We found that at multiple spatial scales, crop switching was most common in sparsely cultivated landscapes and in landscapes with high crop diversity, whereas it was low in homogeneous, highly agricultural areas such as the Midwestern corn belt, suggesting a number of potential social and economic mechanisms influencing farmers’ crop choices. Crop-switching rates were high overall, occurring on more than 6% of all US cropland in the average year. Applying a framework that classified crop switches based on their temporal novelty (crop introduction versus discontinuation), spatial novelty (locally divergent versus convergent switching), and categorical novelty (transformative versus incremental switching), we found distinct spatial patterns for these three novelty dimensions, indicating a dynamic and multifaceted set of cropping changes across US farms. Collectively, these results suggest that innovation through crop switching is playing out very differently in various parts of the country, with potentially significant implications for the resilience of agricultural systems to changes in climate and other systemic trends.

Epidemic models study the spread of undesired agents through populations, be it infectious diseases through a country, misinformation in social media or pests infesting a region. In combating these epidemics, we rely neither on global top-down interventions, nor solely on individual adaptations. Instead, interventions commonly come from local institutions such as public health departments, moderation teams on social media platforms or other forms of group governance. Classic models, which are often individual or agent-based, are ill-suited to capture local adaptations. We leverage developments of institutional dynamics based on cultural group selection to study how groups attempt local control of an epidemic by taking inspiration from the successes and failures of other groups. Incorporating institutional changes into epidemic dynamics reveals paradoxes: a higher transmission rate can result in smaller outbreaks as does decreasing the speed of institutional adaptation. When groups perceive a contagion as more worrisome, they can invest in improved policies and, if they maintain these policies long enough to have impact, lead to a reduction in endemicity. By looking at the interplay between the speed of institutions and the transmission rate of the contagions, we find rich coevolutionary dynamics that reflect the complexity of known biological and social contagions.

The rapid, human-induced changes in the Earth system during the Anthropo- cene present humanity with critical sustainability challenges. Social–ecological systems (SES) research provides multiple approaches for understanding the complex interactions between humans, social systems, and environments and how we might direct them towards healthier and more resilient futures. However, general theories of SES change have yet to be fully developed. Formal evolutionary theory has been applied as a dynamic theory of change of complex phenomena in biology and the social sciences, but rarely in SES research. In this paper, we explore the connections between both fields, hoping to foster collaboration. After sketching out the distinct intellectual traditions of SES research and evolutionary theory, we map some of their ter- minological and theoretical connections. We then provide examples of how evolutionary theory might be incorporated into SES research through the use of systems mapping to identify evolutionary processes in SES, the application of concepts from evolutionary developmental biology to under- stand the connections between systems changes and evolutionary changes, and how evolutionary thinking may help design interventions for beneficial change. Integrating evolutionary theory and SES research can lead to a better understanding of SES changes and positive interventions for a more sustainable Anthropocene.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis’.

The rapid, human-induced changes in the Earth system during the Anthropocene present humanity with critical sustainability challenges. Social–ecological systems (SES) research provides multiple approaches for understanding the complex interactions between humans, social systems, and environments and how we might direct them towards healthier and more resilient futures. However, general theories of SES change have yet to be fully developed. Formal evolutionary theory has been applied as a dynamic theory of change of complex phenomena in biology and the social sciences, but rarely in SES research. In this paper, we explore the connections between both fields, hoping to foster collaboration. After sketching out the distinct intellectual traditions of SES research and evolutionary theory, we map some of their terminological and theoretical connections. We then provide examples of how evolutionary theory might be incorporated into SES research through the use of systems mapping to identify evolutionary processes in SES, the application of concepts from evolutionary developmental biology to understand the connections between systems changes and evolutionary changes, and how evolutionary thinking may help design interventions for beneficial change. Integrating evolutionary theory and SES research can lead to a better understanding of SES changes and positive interventions for a more sustainable Anthropocene. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis’.

How did human societies evolve to become a major force of global change? What dynamics can lead societies on a trajectory of global sustainability? The astonishing growth in human population, economic activity and environmental impact has brought these questions to the fore. This theme issue pulls together a variety of traditions that seek to address these questions using different theories and methods. In this Introduction, we review and organize the major strands of work on how the Anthropocene evolved, how evolutionary dynamics are influencing sustainability efforts today, and what principles, strategies and capacities will be important to guide us towards global sustainability in the future. We present a set of synthetic insights and highlight frontiers for future research efforts which could contribute to a consolidated synthesis. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis’.

We propose that the global environmental crises of the Anthropocene are the outcome of a ratcheting process in long-term human evolution which has favoured groups of increased size and greater environmental exploitation. To explore this hypothesis, we review the changes in the human ecological niche. Evidence indicates the growth of the human niche has been facilitated by group-level cultural traits for environmental control. Following this logic, sustaining the biosphere under intense human use will probably require global cultural traits, including legal and technical systems. We investigate the conditions for the evolution of global cultural traits. We estimate that our species does not exhibit adequate population structure to evolve these traits. Our analysis suggests that characteristic patterns of human group-level cultural evolution created the Anthropocene and will work against global collective solutions to the environmental challenges it poses. We illustrate the implications of this theory with alternative evolutionary paths for humanity. We conclude that our species must alter longstanding patterns of cultural evolution to avoid environmental disaster and escalating between-group competition. We propose an applied research and policy programme with the goal of avoiding these outcomes. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis’.

It has been proposed that climate adaptation research can benefit from an evolutionary approach. But related empirical research is lacking. We advance the evolutionary study of climate adaptation with two case studies from contemporary United States agriculture. First, we define ‘cultural adaptation to climate change’ as a mechanistic process of population-level cultural change. We argue this definition enables rigorous comparisons, yields testable hypotheses from mathematical theory and distinguishes adaptive change, non-adaptive change and desirable policy outcomes. Next, we develop an operational approach to identify ‘cultural adaptation to climate change’ based on established empirical criteria. We apply this approach to data on crop choices and the use of cover crops between 2008 and 2021 from the United States. We find evidence that crop choices are adapting to local trends in two separate climate variables in some regions of the USA. But evidence suggests that cover cropping may be adapting more to the economic environment than climatic conditions. Further research is needed to characterize the process of cultural adaptation, particularly the routes and mechanisms of cultural transmission. Furthermore, climate adaptation policy could benefit from research on factors that differentiate regions exhibiting adaptive trends in crop choice from those that do not. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture’.