Female Philopatry in the Comca'ac Community of Punta Chueca, Sonora, Mexico

Abstract

This paper concerns the study of sex-biased dispersal patterns as related to genealogical and geographical distribution in the Native American, Comca'ac Community of Punta Chueca, Sonora, Mexico. The Comca'ac Community is an isolate community that exemplifies the conditions of being both spatially and temporally structured around a prescribed relational system, which are desirable conditions for research on kin-structured communities. Agricultural communities are typically patrilocal and follow the trend of female-biased dispersal while hunter-gatherer societies follow the trend of matrilocality about equally often and favor male-biased dispersal. Industrialized communities have yet to be accurately classified as demonstrating a definite male-biased dispersal pattern, female-biased dispersal pattern, or neither as it is a continuously evolving society of relative instability. As the Comca'ac have refused to incorporate agriculture into their economy and proven to be a traditional, nonindustrialized community, it was predicted that they would be patterned after a matrilocal community that exhibits male-biased dispersal. By collecting genealogical (degrees of genetic relatedness) and geographical (location of households) data of the Comca'ac, local kin densities were calculated of the mother and father of the offspring of the community to support the hypothesis of the Comca'ac Community as a matrilocal community with a strong pattern of female philopatry. B.S.