Volume 46, Issue 4, July 2025, 106693Author links open overlay panel, AbstractBaumard and André (2025) have suggested that cultural dynamics can be studied as a form of ecology. This provides a simpler unified approach to explaining cultural evolution, within the context of human behaviour being shaped by natural selection. We briefly expand on two points: (1) why inclusive fitness represents our most general answer to what organisms are selected to maximise; (2) the potential for using existing eco-evolutionary theory methods to model cultural evolution.Section snippetsA simpler unified approach to understanding cultural evolution

Baumard and André (2025) have tackled a very important problem: research on cultural evolution is a bit of a mess. Rather than a single unified theory, several different approaches have been used to model or conceptualise cultural evolution. Different methods can give contrasting predictions, even when they seem to be based on the same assumptions. Similarly, the conclusions from empirical data can vary widely. Consequently, fundamental questions remain unanswered. Can cultural evolution be

Inclusive fitness and adaptation

Baumard and André (2025) base their framework on inclusive fitness theory, but space limitations meant that they could not go into how and why inclusive fitness theory was developed. Inclusive fitness theory is often misunderstood and so we wanted to briefly review its links to evolutionary theory more generally, to summarise why inclusive fitness provides our most general theory for explaining adaptation.

Individual organisms appear designed or adapted for the environments in which they live.

Cultural evolutionary theory from an “eco-evolutionary” perspective

Baumard and André (2025) suggest modelling culture as an ecological system. We take their key insight, although implicit there, as using the existing theory of eco-evolutionary dynamics. Eco-evolutionary dynamics describe the interdependence between ecological and evolutionary processes. Consequently, this represents a parsimonious approach to formulate even seemingly complex cultural dynamics.

By linking cultural dynamics with eco-evolutionary dynamics, Baumard and André's (2025) argument on

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Ryosuke Iritani: Conceptualization, Visualization, Writing – original draft. Stuart A. West: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

RI thank Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN: a constituent member of NIHU; Project No. RIHNI 4210183), and JSPS KAKENHI (24H01528 and 24H02291). SAW thank the European Research Council (834164). The authors also thank George Shillcock for useful comments.

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