An evolutionary model of stature, age at first birth and reproductive success in Gambian women.

N Allal; R Sear ORCID logo; AM Prentice ORCID logo; R Mace; (2004) An evolutionary model of stature, age at first birth and reproductive success in Gambian women. Proceedings Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 271 (1538). pp. 465-470. ISSN 0962-8452 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2003.2623
Copy

We have built a model to predict optimal age at first birth for women in a natural fertility population. The only existing fully evolutionary model, based on Ache hunter-gatherers, argues that as women gain weight, their fertility (rate of giving birth) increases-thus age at first birth represents a trade-off between time allocated to weight gain and greater fertility when mature. We identify the life-history implications of female age at first birth in a Gambian population, using uniquely detailed longitudinal data collected from 1950 to date. We use height rather than weight as an indicator of growth as it is more strongly correlated with age at first birth. Stature does not greatly influence fertility in this population but has a significant effect on offspring mortality. We model age at first reproduction as a trade-off between the time spent growing and reduced infant mortality after maturation. Parameters derived from this population are fitted to show that the predicted optimal mean age of first birth, which maximizes reproductive success, is 18 years, very close to that observed. The reaction norm associated with variation in growth rate during childhood also satisfactorily predicts the variation in age at first birth.

visibility_off picture_as_pdf

picture_as_pdf
15129955.pdf
subject
Published Version
lock
Restricted to Repository staff only
copyright
Available under Copyright the publishers

Request Copy
picture_as_pdf

Accepted Version
copyright

Atom BibTeX OpenURL ContextObject in Span Multiline CSV OpenURL ContextObject Dublin Core Dublin Core MPEG-21 DIDL EndNote HTML Citation JSON MARC (ASCII) MARC (ISO 2709) METS MODS RDF+N3 RDF+N-Triples RDF+XML RIOXX2 XML Reference Manager Refer Simple Metadata ASCII Citation EP3 XML
Export

Downloads