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We discuss approaches to the study of the evolution of music (sect. R1); challenges to each of the two theories of the origins of music presented in the companion target articles (sect. R2); future directions for testing them (sect. R3); and priorities for better understanding the nature of music (sect. R4).

Acting on socially learned information involves risk, especially when the consequences imply certain costs with uncertain benefits. Current evolutionary theories argue that decision-makers evaluate and respond to this information based on context cues, such as prestige (the prestige bias model) and/or incentives (the risk and incentives model). We tested the roles of each in explaining trust using a preregistered vignette-based study involving advice about livestock among Maasai pastoralists. In exploratory analyses, we also investigated how the relevance of each might be influenced by recent cultural and economic changes, such as market integration and shifting cultural values. Our confirmatory analysis failed to support the prestige bias model, and partially supported the risk and incentives model. Exploratory analyses suggested that regional acculturation varied strongly between northern vs. southern areas, divided by a small mountain. Consistent with the idea that trust varies with socially transmitted values and regional differences in market integration, people living near densely populated towns in the southern region were more likely to trust socially learned information about livestock. Higher trust among market-integrated participants might reflect a coordination solution in a region where traditional pastoralism is beset with novel conflicts of interest.

People everywhere acquire high levels of conceptual knowledge about their social and natural worlds, which we refer to as ethnoscientific expertise. Evolutionary explanations for expertise are still widely debated. We analysed ethnographic text records (N = 547) describing ethnoscientific expertise among 55 cultures in the Human Relations Area Files to investigate the mutually compatible roles of collaboration, proprietary knowledge, cultural transmission, honest signalling, and mate provisioning. We found relatively high levels of evidence for collaboration, proprietary knowledge, and cultural transmission, and lower levels of evidence for honest signalling and mate provisioning. In our exploratory analyses, we found that whether expertise involved proprietary vs. transmitted knowledge depended on the domain of expertise. Specifically, medicinal knowledge was positively associated with secretive and specialised knowledge for resolving uncommon and serious problems, i.e. proprietary knowledge. Motor skill-related expertise, such as subsistence and technological skills, was positively associated with broadly competent and generous teachers, i.e. cultural transmission. We also found that collaborative expertise was central to both of these models, and was generally important across different knowledge and skill domains.

Smokeless tobacco use among Indian women is increasing despite prevention efforts. Evolutionary theories suggest that reproductive-aged women should be more concerned about immediate threats to reproduction than threats to survival occurring late in life. This study therefore compared an anti-tobacco intervention that emphasized near-term reproductive harms to one involving general harms occurring later in life. Scheduled Tribal women (N = 92) from Karnataka, India participated in this study. At baseline, women reported tobacco use and knowledge of harms, provided a saliva sample to assess use, and randomly viewed either a general harms presentation (GHP) or reproductive harms presentation (RHP). At followup, women reported their use, knowledge of harms and intentions to quit, and provided another saliva sample. At baseline, participants were aware of general harms but not reproductive harms. Both interventions increased knowledge of harms. Women in the RHP condition did not list more harms than women in the GHP condition, however, and the RHP was not more effective in reducing tobacco use than the GHP. In the RHP condition fetal health was particularly salient. In the GHP condition, oral health was highly salient, aligning with the local disease ecology and research on tobacco use and attractiveness., Media summary: Providing information on tobacco’s reproductive harms might reduce tobacco use among Scheduled Tribal women in India.

Researchers, including Boyer & Petersen (B&P), commonly use experimental economic studies to draw their conclusions. These studies conventionally strip away context and present participants only with abstract rules. Because context is a strictly necessary component of the decision-making process, it is not clear that inferences about high-level folk psychological concepts (e.g., rationality) can be drawn from decontextualized economic games.

The fitness maximization standard incorrectly assumes that most adaptations have high heritablility, and it imposes the difficult requirement that correlated phenotypic and environmental contributors to reproduction be controlled for. Despite infrequently recognized problems, the special design standard is the foundation of the spectacular successes of modern medicine. It also suggests that the ancestral environment provides a window into the functioning of the brain.

We applaud Müller & Schumann (M&S) for bringing needed attention to the problem of motivation for common non-addictive drug use, as opposed to the usual focus on exotic drugs and addiction. Unfortunately, their target article has many underdeveloped and sometimes contradictory ideas. Here, we will focus on three key issues.

An evolutionary account of excessive crying in young infants – colic – has been elusive. A study of mothers with new infants suggests that more crying is associated with more negative emotions towards the infant, and perceptions of poorer infant health. These results undermine the hypothesis that excessive crying is an honest signal of vigor.

Proxies of mate value must be evolutionarily salient. Gangestad & Simpson (G&S) have made a good case that fluctuating asymmetry is an important proxy of male mate value that correlates well with genetic and developmental quality. The use of financial variables as proxies for male investment ability by Gangestad, Simpson, and virtually every other investigator of human mating in evolutionary perspective, is, however, more problematic.

There will hardly be a naturalist who has not spent considerable time to study the questions–What is a genus, and what are generic characters? Indeed, work is nearly impossible without having taken a position with regard to these questions. A full record of the literature, even the most condensed one, would be here out of p1ace, but I have been induced by a recent and most surprising discovery bearing upon this question to make this communication.

The question how to check the ravages of obnoxious insects is a very important one, and I am very often asked for advice in special cases. While occupied with a close examination of the proposed remedies and looking through a large number of scientific tracts, some of them fell into my hands and induced me to study them again. The present communication is the result of those studies.

In a recent issue of the Canadian Entomologist, No. viii, Vol. vi, there appears from the pen of Mr. Scudder a paper on “The Linnean Signification of the Generic Term Papilio,” containing some statements on which I propose to offer a few remarks.The data given by Scudder from Linné's works are-save some minor typographical errors-correct, excepting in two important points. On p. 144 he says “in the year 1846 the first edition of the Fauna Suecica was published, in which Linne for the first time treats of species, giving to them names in the language of the country,” (The italics are mine.)

Perhaps a few additions to Mr. J. A. Lintner's very interesting article will not be out of place. In 1872 the late Mrs. W. P. L. Garrison came to visit the Museum, and told me about an insect destroying the carpets in Buffalo, N. Y., and named there “the Buffalo pest.” I had not then heard anything about the insect, and Mrs. Garrison, after her departure, was kind enough to send me some living specimens from Buffalo.