What -ogamy are we?

Martin mulls over the question, Are Humans Polygamous? There is lots of interesting discussion, with a FinnXPer & reindeer lover in the fray. I think part of the confusion here is simply semantical. Cultural anthropologists often tend to define an -ogamy based on the preferred ideal within a society. So you have circumstances where the social ideal is polygyny, but for various reasons most males (and even females) aren't in polygynous relationships. In contrast, behavioral ecologists tend to look at it a different way, the extent of polygyny can be thought of as the ratio of the reproductive skew of males to females. In other words, if males exhibit high skew (so that only a few males reproduce in a generation) and females exhibit low skew (so that most females reproduce) then you have a species which is highly polygynous. Traditionally one would have to use the tricks of the ...