I think you have some misconceptions about the red queen hypothesis, which has to do with reciprocal adaptation between parasite/predator and host/prey, rather than some switch to polygamy. A vague abiotic condition such as "high general mortality"
Actually, what is going on, is that I am a disease ecologist that spent a fair amount of time studying population dynamics through a large arrangement of species. Most of which, when being "r" selected such as humans are in Zal, switch to poly type relationships where either the male or female takes on multiple partners to 1. increase the rate of having offspring 2. have the best genetics for each offspring 3. insure continuation of the species.
As a disease ecologist myself, I'd like to see that research, especially in humans. Given that, off the top of my head, I can recall that there are several seminal papers revolving around behavioral tendencies and strong selective pressures to become less promiscuous and social overall under high disease mortality, particularly when faced with communicable diseases that you and I study. But this also extends to any social contact. For example, Storfer et al showed that even in something as simple as a salamander, social interactions (like cannibalism) are reduced when disease is in play and mortality is high.
That being said, humans can't switch from being K selected to being R selected. They can have more children, certainly, but we have physiological limitations in play. I'm not going to spawn 100,000,000 eggs like a black marlin just because Mekillots are a thing.
I am on my phone in a car so it is hard for me to respond </disclaimer>
I'm not talking about in only a disease sense, and you are correct that humans cant switch between r and K selection. i suppose we could equate violence to a disease, but i was mainly talk8ng about shift in animal behavior to being more promiscuous in times of hardship. this goes along with red queen hypothesis, as well as general selection. i can't access jstor via my android, but there is an interesting submission there (us for prarie voles monogamy should get it) where some holes in stable environments will engage in monotonous relationships, while prarie voles in harsher environments will engage in multiple relationships, in order to spread genetics as well as have the beat mate available for higher survivorship in offspring. interestingly, the monotonous prarie voles showed higher levels of oxytocin, while the poly voles had higher levels of dopamine (if I remember correctly... I'll re read the article after the Christmas season is over and i have jstor access once more)
anouther example could be chimps and bonobos, phalarope,Northern jacana...
I'll come back to this.
Satine, I think you're applying Red Queen in circumstances where it's not applicable. The vague general antibiotic mortality inducing promiscuity isn't red queen. Abiotic factors aren't evolving. You need reciprocal adaptation and coevolution between two living entities (parasite/host or predator/prey) to fulfill Red Queen. An organism simply adapting lifestyle characteristics to harsher environments is just adaptation, not Red Queen.
That being said, I'm familiar with Larry Young's work on the voles, and you've got it backwards. Prairie voles, which exist in an ecological sink (ie, praries have less food resources than meadows) are the monogamous clade. When times are tough and population numbers are low (due to high mortality and low resources), it's better to mate pair and produce few, high quality offspring. Quoting directly from Larry's manuscript:
"Prairie voles are believed to have evolved in the tall-grass prairies, which are very low in food resources and where population densities are likely to be very low. Under these conditions, males may enhance their reproductive success by nesting with a single female and producing multiple litters, rather than risk not finding a fertile mate. An alternative explanation proposes that, since prairie voles utilize a saturated habitat, dispersal opportunities are low. Thus, natural selection favors the production of high-quality, low-quantity offspring reared by two parents."
The meadow voles are in patchier habitat of higher quality, and require high densities of low quality offspring to disperse across patches -- the shotgun approach. That being said, neither of these are totally analogous to humans because voles are voles, not people.
However, Arthi and Fenske (Polygamy and child mortality: Historical and modern evidence from Nigeria’s Igbo) showed that even in the same community, same resource pressures, same mate pool, same socio-economic status, being polygamous meant fewer surviving offspring, not more. And that was in people. The monogamous couplings were more re-productively successful in a sustenance tribal society. Granted when they looked at historical data, they lost this signal, so it's inconclusive, but I don't see how evolutionary biology of 'times are tough, spread your seed' applies to humans. There's no evidence I can find for that.
Now, as far as this being a game and not under the thumb of evolutionary biology, that's a whole 'nother debate I'm willing to stand on the sidelines for and let more invested parties decide on, but evolutionary biology and natural selection is
not going to unanimously favor polygamy in harsh environments. Evidence is equivocal, or slightly inversely correlated.
