This article examines possible environmental predictors of ethnic diversity around the world. Results suggest that global ethnic diversity is associated with latitude, habitat diversity, pathogen stress, and climate.

This article investigates the degree of political centralization in pre-industrial and the political competitive outcomes in 15 modern-day Sub-Sahara African countries. The authors first report that pre-colonial centralization decreases political competitiveness in modern day countries, advocating that traditional power structures play a role in modern day politics. The authors then use light-density as a proxy for regional development and test developmental outcomes based on political centralization and competitiveness. They report pre-colonial centralization positively affected regional development and suggest this could be due to more centralized institutions increasing the capacity of chiefs to mobilize voters, in turn lowering political competition and increasing the accountability of elected officials. Many controls are introduced.

Using a self selected sample of 33 ex British colonies and the Ethnic Power Relations database, the author sampled 170 ethnic groups from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to test for association between precolonial state formation, colonial state building tactics, and modern ethnic conflicts. The author theorized that ethnic groups that were centrally governed before the colonial period were less likely to be recruited to colonial security forces, leaving them out of the picture during the formation of the independence movement and the formation of a post-colonial regime. This in turn is theorized to lead to greater contemporary armed conflict against the regime from which they were excluded.

The researchers test the relationship between political complexity among African pre-colonial ethnic institutions and contemporary economic performance (using light-density data as a proxy). Their tests yield a robust positive association even after controlling for multiple alternative geographic, cultural, and economic variables, which they interpret as underscoring the ongoing importance of ethnic-specific institutions in shaping economic activity in contemporary Africa.

This study seeks to examine the influence that UV radiation and climate might have on gender inequality, and tests two extant theories on why gender inequality exists -- the life-history theory (aligned with climate) and the cognitive performance theory (aligned with UV radiation). The model with UV radiation as the main predictor fits the data on gender inequality the best, and pathogen prevalence and the ACP1*B allele were also found to be associated with gender inequality. The model was found to be robust across continents and ancestry. The study also highlights the need for further research to better understand the complex interplay of these factors in different cultures.

The authors of this study examine the relationships between historical exposure to Islamic kingdoms and current economic, medical, and educational development in Africa. They predict that ethnic groups that were previously ruled by Islamic states or chiefdoms will have worse outcomes today, theorizing that these worse outcomes would be not as a result of an inherent characteristic of Islam or Islamic kingdoms themselves but rather decreased investment by colonial states or missions. Their results lend some support to their hypotheses, and particularly to the predictions that Christian missions and colonial states would not be able to penetrate areas under Islamic influence as easily as other regions.

This study focuses on the relationship between pathogen prevalence and mate selection. Results show that increased pathogen prevalence is significantly associated with an increased importance in the physical attractiveness of potential mates.

The study looks at 137 countries and examines the relationship between disbelief in God and increased security in health, economic development and security. The findings provide additional support for the uncertainty hypothesis as there is a positive relationship between a country's health or financial growth/security and the population's disbelief in God.

This article examines the relationship between pathogen stress and polygyny. Results indicate that there is a positive association between the two that is not confounded by geographic region, latitude, population density, male-male competition, or presence of brideprice. In particular, pathogen stress precicts higher levels of non-sororal polygyny and capturing women for wives or concubines.

The present study examines the relationship between pathogen prevalence and the domestic living-organization of 186 societies from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS). The measurement for pathogen stress consists of ten diseases described by Low (1991) and Caden and Steele (2013). These are dengue, typhus, plague, filariae, schistosomes, leishmanias, trypanosomes, malaria, leprosy, and spirochetes; the transmission for these diseases was contagious and/or mobile. The measurement for the living organization came from the 'Household Form' variable by Murdock and White (1969). The seven categories of household form variable were then re-coded into two variables. The first is modular, which includes single-family and family homestead. The second is communal and includes large communal structure, multifamily household, husband rotates, individuals, married, and husband separate. The findings offer support for the evolutionary hypothesis that modular living is adaptive because it may reduce pathogen stress. Specifically, pathogen stress is influential in the way people live.