Faculty | Walker

Robert Walker

Assistant Professor
Ph.D. with distinction, New Mexico, 2004
email: walkerro@missouri.edu
phone: 573-884-0600
c.v. (PDF)

Database for Indigenous Cultural Evolution (DICE)

Research and Teaching Interests

My research focuses on trying to understand the evolution of human bio-cultural variation. I conduct fieldwork in Brazil and collect comparative population and cultural information for large samples of lowland South American societies. This research is comprised of 4 main areas of interest:

1. Cultural phylogenetics: investigation of population expansions, phylogeographies, and cultural evolution using comparative phylogenetic methods based on language
2. Amazonian cultural variation: evolutionary histories of various cultural traits including violence and warfare, post-marital residence, and partible paternity, the conception belief that multiple men can be co-genitors of one child; partible paternity beliefs are common in lowland South American yet essentially unheard of in the rest of the world
3. Hunter-gatherer cultural variation: global comparative databases involving kin co-residence, mating/marriage practices, and other cultural traits to reconstruct ancestral human culture
4. Life-history variation and population dynamics: quantifying rates of growth, fertility, and mortality across natural-fertility human populations with a focus on population dynamics of recently-contacted and isolated Amazonian societies with implications for ethnolinguistic conservation

Opportunities for Students

Opportunities abound for students to explore any of the above areas of research. Interested students with questions concerning research opportunities or graduate studies are encouraged to contact me via email.

Publications

2013

• Bailey DH, RS Walker, GE Blomquist, KR Hill, AM Hurtado, DC Geary. Heritability and fitness correlates of personality in the Ache, a natural-fertility population in Paraguay. PLoS ONE 8: e59325 [pdf]
• Walker, R. S., S. Beckerman, M. V. Flinn, M. Gurven, C. R. von Rueden, K. L. Kramer, R. D. Greaves, L. Córdoba, D. Villar, E. H. Hagen, J. M. Koster, L. Sugiyama, T. E. Hunter, K. R. Hill. Living with kin in lowland horticultural societies. Current Anthropology 54:96-103 [pdf]
• Walker, R. S. and D. H. Bailey. Body counts in lowland South American violence. Evolution & Human Behavior 34:29-34 [pdf]

2012

• Bailey DH, MJ Hamilton, RS Walker. Latitude, population size, and the language-farming dispersal hypothesis. Evolutionary Ecology Research 14: 1057-1067 [pdf]
• Wichmann, S., E. W. Holman, T. Rama, R. S. Walker. Correlates of reticulation in linguistic phylogenies. Language Dynamics and Change 1:205-240 [pdf]
• Walker, R. S., S. Wichmann, T. Mailund, C. J. Atkisson. Cultural phylogenetics of the Tupi language family in lowland South America. PLoS ONE 7:e35025 [pdf]
• Hamilton, M. J., O. Burger, R. S. Walker. Human Ecology, in Metabolic Ecology: A Scaling Approach. Eds. R.M. Sibly, A. Kodric-Brown, and J.H. Brown. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, pp. 248-257 [pdf]

2011

• Hogg, R. T, R. S. Walker. Life-history correlates of enamel microstructure in Cebidae (Platyrrhini, Primates). Anatomical Record 294:2193-2206 [pdf]
• Gawlik, A, R. S. Walker, Z. Hochberg. Impact of infancy duration on adult size in 22 subsistence-based societies. Acta Paediatrica 100:e248-e252 [pdf]
• Hochberg, Z, A. Gawlik, R. S. Walker. Evolutionary fitness as a function of pubertal age in 22 subsistence-based traditional societies. International Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology 2011:2. [pdf]
• Walker, R. S., K. R. Hill, M. V. Flinn, R. M. Ellsworth. Evolutionary history of hunter-gatherer marriage practices. PLoS ONE 6(4): e19066. [pdf]
• Hill, K., R. S. Walker, M. Bozicevic, J. Eder, T. Headland, B. Hewlett, A. M. Hurtado, F. Marlowe, P. Wiessner, and B. Wood. Co-residence patterns in hunter-gatherer societies show unique human social structure. Science 331:1286-1289. [pdf]
• Walker, R. S. and L. A. Ribeiro. Bayesian phylogeography of the Arawak expansion in lowland South America. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 278:2562-2567 [pdf]
• Walker, R. S. and M. Hamilton. Social complexity and linguistic diversity in Austronesian and Bantu population expansions. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 278:1399-1404 [pdf]

2010

• Walker, R. S., M. V. Flinn, and K. R. Hill. Evolutionary history of partible paternity in lowland South America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 107:19195-19200 [pdf]
• Burger, O., R. S. Walker, and M. J. Hamilton. Lifetime reproductive effort in humans. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 277:773-777 [pdf]

2009

• Hamilton, M. J., O. Burger, J. P. DeLong, R. S. Walker, M. Moses, and J. H. Brown. Population stability, cooperation and the invasibility of the human species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 106:12255-12260 [pdf]

2008

• Walker, R. S., M. Gurven, O. Burger, and M. J. Hamilton. The trade-off between number and size of offspring in humans and other primates. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 275:827-833 [pdf]
• Walker, R. S. and M. J. Hamilton. Life history consequences of density dependence and the evolution of human body sizes. Current Anthropology 49:115-122 [pdf]

2007

• Hamilton, M. J., B. T. Milne, R. S. Walker, O. Burger, and J. H. Brown. The complex structure of hunter-gatherer social networks. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 274:2195-2202 [pdf]
• Hamilton, M. J., B. T. Milne, R. S. Walker, and J. H. Brown. Nonlinear scaling of space use in human hunter-gatherers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 104:4765-4769 [pdf]
• Hill, K., A. M. Hurtado, and R. S. Walker. High adult mortality among Hiwi hunter-gatherers: Implications for human evolution. Journal of Human Evolution 52:443-454 [pdf]

2006

• Walker, R. S., O. Burger, J. Wagner, and C. Von Rueden. Evolution of brain size and juvenile periods in primates. Journal of Human Evolution 51:480-89 [pdf]
• Walker, R. S., M. Gurven, K. Hill, A. Migliano, N. Chagnon, R. De Souza, G. Djurovic, R. Hames, A. M. Hurtado, H. Kaplan, K. Kramer, W. J. Oliver, C. Valeggia, and T. Yamauchi. Growth rates and life histories in twenty-two small-scale societies. American Journal of Human Biology 18:295-311 [pdf]
• Walker, R. S., K. Hill, O. Burger, and A. M. Hurtado. Life in the slow lane revisited: Ontogenetic separation between chimpanzees and humans. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 129:577-583 [pdf]
• Gurven, M. and R. S. Walker. Energetic demand of multiple dependents and the evolution of slow human growth. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 273: 835-841 [pdf]

2005

• Burger, O., M. Hamilton, and R. S. Walker. The prey as patch model: A marginal gains curve for vertebrate prey. Journal of Archaeological Science 32:1147-1158 [pdf]

2003

• Walker, R. S. and K. Hill. Modeling growth and senescence in physical performance among the Ache of Eastern Paraguay. American Journal of Human Biology 15:196-208 [pdf]

2002

• Walker, R. S., K. Hill, H. Kaplan, and G. MacMillan. Age-dependency in hunting ability among the Ache of eastern Paraguay. Journal of Human Evolution 42:639-657 [pdf]

2001

• Todd, L. C., D. C. Jones, R. S. Walker, P. Burnett, and J. Eighmy. Late archaic bison hunters in Northern Colorado: 1997-1999 Excavations at the Kaplan-Hoover Bison Bonebed (5LR3953). Plains Anthropologist 46:125-147 [pdf]

107 Swallow Hall | 573-882-4731 (phone) | 573-884-5450 (fax)
general inquiries: Cynthia Irsik - irsikc@missouri.edu

Department of Anthropology | College of Arts and Science | University of Missouri
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