The ecology of wealth inequality in animal societies

Authors

Eli D. Strauss, Max Planck Institute of Animal BehaviourFollow
Daizaburo Shizuka, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

ORCID IDs

EDS http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3413-1642

DZ http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0478-6309

Date of this Version

2022

Citation

Strauss ED, Shizuka D. 2022 The ecology of wealth inequality in animal societies. Proc. R. Soc. B 289: 20220500. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.0500

Comments

© 2022 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License

Abstract

Individuals vary in their access to resources, social connections and phenotypic traits, and a central goal of evolutionary biology is to understand how this variation arises and influences fitness. Parallel research on humans has focused on the causes and consequences of variation in material possessions, opportunity and health. Central to both fields of study is that unequal distribution of wealth is an important component of social structure that drives variation in relevant outcomes. Here, we advance a research framework and agenda for studying wealth inequality within an ecological and evolutionary context. This ecology of inequality approach presents the opportunity to reintegrate key evolutionary concepts as different dimensions of the link between wealth and fitness by (i) developing measures of wealth and inequality as taxonomically broad features of societies, (ii) considering how feedback loops link inequality to individual and societal outcomes, (iii) exploring the ecological and evolutionary underpinnings of what makes some societies more unequal than others, and (iv) studying the long-term dynamics of inequality as a central component of social evolution. We hope that this framework will facilitate a cohesive understanding of inequality as a widespread biological phenomenon and clarify the role of social systems as central to evolutionary biology.