Bret Beheim
Biographic Data
| ID | 170595 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bret Beheim |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bret |
| FAMILY NAME | Beheim |
| SIGNATURE | BEHEIM B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4653-3155 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 65 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Opening strategies in the game of go from feudalism to superhuman AI
How does information infrastructure shape long-term cultural evolution? Using over four centuries of professional game records from the game of Go, this study explores how strategic dynamics in opening moves reflect historical shifts in the ‘infostructure’ of skilled Go players. Drawing from recent work on how population size, AI, and information technology affect cultural evolution and innovation dynamics, I analyze over 118,000 games using meas…
Why cultural distance can promote – or impede – group-beneficial outcomes
Quantifying the distance between cultural groups has received substantial recent interest. A key innovation, borrowed from population genetics, is the calculation of cultural F ST ( CF ST ) statistics on datasets of human culture. Measuring the variance between groups as a fraction of total variance, F ST is theoretically important in additive models of cooperation. Consistent with this, recent empirical work has confirmed that high values of pai…
Cross-cousin marriage among Tsimane forager–horticulturalists during demographic transition and market integration
Although still prevalent in many human societies, the practice of cousin marriage has precipitously declined in populations undergoing rapid demographic and socioeconomic change. However, it is still unclear whether changes in the structure of the marriage pool or changes in the fitness-relevant consequences of cousin marriage more strongly influence the frequency of cousin marriage. Here, we use genealogical data collected by the Tsimane Health …
Energetic costs of testosterone in two subsistence populations
OBJECTIVE: Testosterone plays a role in mediating energetic trade-offs between growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Investments in a high testosterone phenotype trade-off against other functions, particularly survival-enhancing immune function and cellular repair; thus only individuals in good condition can maintain both a high testosterone phenotype and somatic maintenance. While these effects are observed in experimental manipulations, they a…
The complex life course of mobility: Quantitative description of 300,000 residential moves in 1850–1950 Netherlands
Mobility is a major mechanism of human adaptation, both in the deep past and in the present. Decades of research in the human evolutionary sciences have elucidated how much, how and when individuals and groups move in response to their ecology. Prior research has focused on small-scale subsistence societies, often in marginal environments and yielding small samples. Yet adaptive movement is commonplace across human societies, providing an opportu…
Entropy trade-offs in artistic design: A case study of Tamilkolam
Information transmission and the oral tradition: Evidence of a late-life service niche for Tsimane Amerindians
The Tsimane Health and Life History Project: Integrating anthropology and biomedicine
The Tsimane Health and Life History Project, an integrated bio‐behavioral study of the human life course, is designed to test competing hypotheses of human life‐history evolution. One aim is to understand the bidirectional connections between life history and social behavior in a high‐fertility, kin‐based context lacking amenities of modern urban life (e.g. sanitation, banks, electricity). Another aim is to understand how a high pathogen burden i…
Cognitive performance across the life course of Bolivian forager-farmers with limited schooling
Cognitive performance is characterized by at least two distinct life course trajectories. Many cognitive abilities (e.g., "effortful processing" abilities, including fluid reasoning and processing speed) improve throughout early adolescence and start declining in early adulthood, whereas other abilities (e.g., "crystallized" abilities like vocabulary breadth) improve throughout adult life, remaining robust even at late ages. Although schooling ma…
Immune function in Amazonian horticulturalists
Tsimane ecology leads to lymphocyte repertoires and immunoglobulin profiles that differ from those observed in industrialised populations. These differences have consequences for disease susceptibility and co-vary with patterns of other life history traits, such as growth and reproduction
High resting metabolic rate among Amazonian forager‐horticulturalists experiencing high pathogen burden
OBJECTIVES: Resting metabolic rate (RMR) reflects energetic costs of homeostasis and accounts for 60 to 75% of total energy expenditure (TEE). Lean mass and physical activity account for much RMR variability, but the impact of prolonged immune activation from infection on human RMR is unclear in naturalistic settings. We evaluate the effects of infection on mass-corrected RMR among Bolivian forager-horticulturalists, and assess whether RMR declin…
Growth references for Tsimane forager‐horticulturalists of the Bolivian Amazon
International references for BMI-for-age and WFH are likely appropriate for Tsimane, but differences in height-for-age and weight-for-age suggest Tsimane specific references may be useful for these measures
Reproducible Research as Our New Default
Low mineral density of a weight‐bearing bone among adult women in a high fertility population
Evolutionary theories of aging posit that greater reproductive effort causes somatic decline given a fundamental trade‐off between investing energy in reproduction and repair. Few studies in high fertility human populations support this hypothesis, and problems of phenotypic correlation can obscure the expected trade‐off between reproduction and somatic condition. This cross‐sectional study investigates whether greater reproductive effort is asso…
Strategic social learning and the population dynamics of human behavior: The game of Go
Evolutionary Decomposition and the Mechanisms of Cultural Change
Beginning with the Price equation, recent work has developed the method of evolutionary decomposition, an exact partitioning of mean phenotypic change into underlying demographic processes. We present a method of evolutionary decomposition for human cultural change, and a demonstration of this method on three centuries of half-decadal census records collected from a simulated island population. By decomposing phenotypic trajectories, we can devel…
Growth references for Tsimane forager‐horticulturalists of the Bolivian Amazon
International references for BMI-for-age and WFH are likely appropriate for Tsimane, but differences in height-for-age and weight-for-age suggest Tsimane specific references may be useful for these measures
Low mineral density of a weight‐bearing bone among adult women in a high fertility population
Evolutionary theories of aging posit that greater reproductive effort causes somatic decline given a fundamental trade‐off between investing energy in reproduction and repair. Few studies in high fertility human populations support this hypothesis, and problems of phenotypic correlation can obscure the expected trade‐off between reproduction and somatic condition. This cross‐sectional study investigates whether greater reproductive effort is asso…
High resting metabolic rate among Amazonian forager‐horticulturalists experiencing high pathogen burden
OBJECTIVES: Resting metabolic rate (RMR) reflects energetic costs of homeostasis and accounts for 60 to 75% of total energy expenditure (TEE). Lean mass and physical activity account for much RMR variability, but the impact of prolonged immune activation from infection on human RMR is unclear in naturalistic settings. We evaluate the effects of infection on mass-corrected RMR among Bolivian forager-horticulturalists, and assess whether RMR declin…
Cognitive performance across the life course of Bolivian forager-farmers with limited schooling
Cognitive performance is characterized by at least two distinct life course trajectories. Many cognitive abilities (e.g., "effortful processing" abilities, including fluid reasoning and processing speed) improve throughout early adolescence and start declining in early adulthood, whereas other abilities (e.g., "crystallized" abilities like vocabulary breadth) improve throughout adult life, remaining robust even at late ages. Although schooling ma…
Entropy trade-offs in artistic design: A case study of Tamilkolam
Why cultural distance can promote – or impede – group-beneficial outcomes
Quantifying the distance between cultural groups has received substantial recent interest. A key innovation, borrowed from population genetics, is the calculation of cultural F ST ( CF ST ) statistics on datasets of human culture. Measuring the variance between groups as a fraction of total variance, F ST is theoretically important in additive models of cooperation. Consistent with this, recent empirical work has confirmed that high values of pai…
Reproducible Research as Our New Default
Evolutionary Decomposition and the Mechanisms of Cultural Change
Beginning with the Price equation, recent work has developed the method of evolutionary decomposition, an exact partitioning of mean phenotypic change into underlying demographic processes. We present a method of evolutionary decomposition for human cultural change, and a demonstration of this method on three centuries of half-decadal census records collected from a simulated island population. By decomposing phenotypic trajectories, we can devel…
Strategic social learning and the population dynamics of human behavior: The game of Go
Low mineral density of a weight‐bearing bone among adult women in a high fertility population
Evolutionary theories of aging posit that greater reproductive effort causes somatic decline given a fundamental trade‐off between investing energy in reproduction and repair. Few studies in high fertility human populations support this hypothesis, and problems of phenotypic correlation can obscure the expected trade‐off between reproduction and somatic condition. This cross‐sectional study investigates whether greater reproductive effort is asso…
Immune function in Amazonian horticulturalists
Tsimane ecology leads to lymphocyte repertoires and immunoglobulin profiles that differ from those observed in industrialised populations. These differences have consequences for disease susceptibility and co-vary with patterns of other life history traits, such as growth and reproduction
High resting metabolic rate among Amazonian forager‐horticulturalists experiencing high pathogen burden
OBJECTIVES: Resting metabolic rate (RMR) reflects energetic costs of homeostasis and accounts for 60 to 75% of total energy expenditure (TEE). Lean mass and physical activity account for much RMR variability, but the impact of prolonged immune activation from infection on human RMR is unclear in naturalistic settings. We evaluate the effects of infection on mass-corrected RMR among Bolivian forager-horticulturalists, and assess whether RMR declin…
Growth references for Tsimane forager‐horticulturalists of the Bolivian Amazon
International references for BMI-for-age and WFH are likely appropriate for Tsimane, but differences in height-for-age and weight-for-age suggest Tsimane specific references may be useful for these measures
Reproducible Research as Our New Default
The Tsimane Health and Life History Project: Integrating anthropology and biomedicine
The Tsimane Health and Life History Project, an integrated bio‐behavioral study of the human life course, is designed to test competing hypotheses of human life‐history evolution. One aim is to understand the bidirectional connections between life history and social behavior in a high‐fertility, kin‐based context lacking amenities of modern urban life (e.g. sanitation, banks, electricity). Another aim is to understand how a high pathogen burden i…
Cognitive performance across the life course of Bolivian forager-farmers with limited schooling
Cognitive performance is characterized by at least two distinct life course trajectories. Many cognitive abilities (e.g., "effortful processing" abilities, including fluid reasoning and processing speed) improve throughout early adolescence and start declining in early adulthood, whereas other abilities (e.g., "crystallized" abilities like vocabulary breadth) improve throughout adult life, remaining robust even at late ages. Although schooling ma…
Information transmission and the oral tradition: Evidence of a late-life service niche for Tsimane Amerindians
Entropy trade-offs in artistic design: A case study of Tamilkolam
The complex life course of mobility: Quantitative description of 300,000 residential moves in 1850–1950 Netherlands
Mobility is a major mechanism of human adaptation, both in the deep past and in the present. Decades of research in the human evolutionary sciences have elucidated how much, how and when individuals and groups move in response to their ecology. Prior research has focused on small-scale subsistence societies, often in marginal environments and yielding small samples. Yet adaptive movement is commonplace across human societies, providing an opportu…
Energetic costs of testosterone in two subsistence populations
OBJECTIVE: Testosterone plays a role in mediating energetic trade-offs between growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Investments in a high testosterone phenotype trade-off against other functions, particularly survival-enhancing immune function and cellular repair; thus only individuals in good condition can maintain both a high testosterone phenotype and somatic maintenance. While these effects are observed in experimental manipulations, they a…
Why cultural distance can promote – or impede – group-beneficial outcomes
Quantifying the distance between cultural groups has received substantial recent interest. A key innovation, borrowed from population genetics, is the calculation of cultural F ST ( CF ST ) statistics on datasets of human culture. Measuring the variance between groups as a fraction of total variance, F ST is theoretically important in additive models of cooperation. Consistent with this, recent empirical work has confirmed that high values of pai…
Cross-cousin marriage among Tsimane forager–horticulturalists during demographic transition and market integration
Although still prevalent in many human societies, the practice of cousin marriage has precipitously declined in populations undergoing rapid demographic and socioeconomic change. However, it is still unclear whether changes in the structure of the marriage pool or changes in the fitness-relevant consequences of cousin marriage more strongly influence the frequency of cousin marriage. Here, we use genealogical data collected by the Tsimane Health …
Opening strategies in the game of go from feudalism to superhuman AI
How does information infrastructure shape long-term cultural evolution? Using over four centuries of professional game records from the game of Go, this study explores how strategic dynamics in opening moves reflect historical shifts in the ‘infostructure’ of skilled Go players. Drawing from recent work on how population size, AI, and information technology affect cultural evolution and innovation dynamics, I analyze over 118,000 games using meas…
Biology (9 works) · Demography (9 works) · Population (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Geography (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Demography (5 works) · Ecology (5 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (4 works) · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (4 works)