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Abstract
Previous research has studied the association between ethnoclimatological knowledge and decision-making in agriculture and pastoral activities but has paid scant attention to how ethnoclimatological knowledge might affect hunting and gathering, an important economic activity for many rural populations. The work presented here tests whether people who can forecast temperature and rain display higher hunting and gathering returns (measured as kilograms per hour for hunting and cash equivalent for gathering). Data were collected among three indigenous, small-scale, subsistence-based societies largely dependent on hunting and gathering for their livelihoods: the Tsimane' (Amazonia, n = 107), the Baka (Congo basin, n = 164), and the Punan Tubu (Borneo, n = 103).The ability to forecast rainfall and temperature varied from one society to another, but the average consistency between people's 1-day rainfall and temperature forecasts and instrumental measurements was low. This study found a statistically significant positive association between consistency in forecasting rain and the probability that a person engaged in hunting. Conversely, neither consistency in forecasting rain nor consistency in forecasting temperature were associated in a statistically significant way with actual returns to hunting or gathering activities. The authors discuss methodological limitations of the approach, suggesting improvements for future work. This study concludes that, other than methodological issues, the lack of strong associations might be partly explained by the fact that an important characteristic of local knowledge systems, including ethnoclimatological knowledge, is that they are widely socialized and shared.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 ; The last two decades have seen a proliferation of research frameworks that emphasise the importance of understanding adaptive processes that happen at different levels. We contribute to this growing body of literature by exploring how cultural (mal)adaptive dynamics relate to multilevel social-ecological processes occurring at different scales, where the lower levels combine into new units with new organizations, functions, and emergent properties or collective behaviors. After a brief review of the concept of "cultural adaptation" from the perspective of cultural evolutionary theory, the core of the paper is constructed around the exploration of multilevel processes occurring at the temporal, spatial, social, and political scales. We do so by using insights from cultural evolutionary theory and by examining small-scale societies as case studies. In each section, we discuss the importance of the selected scale for understanding cultural adaptation and then present an example that illustrates how multilevel processes in the selected scale help explain observed patterns in the cultural adaptive process. The last section of the paper discusses the potential of modeling and computer simulation for studying multilevel processes in cultural adaptation. We conclude by highlighting how elements from cultural evolutionary theory might enrich the multilevel process discussion in resilience theory.

Decisions on landscape management are often dictated by government officials based on their own understandings of how landscape should be used and managed, but rarely considering local peoples' understandings of the landscape they inhabit. We use data collected through free listings, field transects, and interviews to describe how an Amazonian group of hunter-horticulturalists, the Tsimane', classify and perceive the importance of different elements of the landscape across the ecological, socioeconomic, and spiritual dimensions. The Tsimane' recognize nine folk ecotopes (i.e., culturally-recognized landscape units) and use a variety of criteria (including geomorphological features and landscape uses) to differentiate ecotopes from one another. The Tsimane' rank different folk ecotopes in accordance with their perceived ecological, socioeconomic, and spiritual importance. Understanding how local people perceive their landscape contributes towards a landscape management planning paradigm that acknowledges the continuing contributions to management of landscape inhabitants, as well as their cultural and land use rights.