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O brother, where art thou? Investment in siblings for inclusive fitness benefits, not father absence, predicts earlier age at menarche
Numerous studies have indicated that father absence is associated with earlier age at menarche, with many evolutionary theories assuming that father absence is a causal factor that accelerates reproductive development. However, an alternative interpretation suggests that offspring may reproduce earl...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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The Royal Society
2017
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5665773/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29046373 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0464 |
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author | Smith, Daniel |
author_facet | Smith, Daniel |
author_sort | Smith, Daniel |
collection | PubMed |
description | Numerous studies have indicated that father absence is associated with earlier age at menarche, with many evolutionary theories assuming that father absence is a causal factor that accelerates reproductive development. However, an alternative interpretation suggests that offspring may reproduce earlier in the presence of half- or step-siblings as the indirect fitness benefits to investing in them are lower, relative to delaying reproduction and investing in full siblings. From this perspective, father absence may perform no causal role in facilitating the onset of menarche. Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, I find that individuals with only half- or step-siblings reach reproductive age earlier than those with only full siblings, with no independent effect of father absence. These results suggest that inclusive fitness benefits to investing in siblings, rather than father absence, may predict variation in age at menarche. These results provide a greater understanding of the adaptive mechanisms involved in reproductive decision-making, as well as potential implications for human life-history evolution and cooperative breeding more broadly. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5665773 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-56657732017-11-08 O brother, where art thou? Investment in siblings for inclusive fitness benefits, not father absence, predicts earlier age at menarche Smith, Daniel Biol Lett Evolutionary Biology Numerous studies have indicated that father absence is associated with earlier age at menarche, with many evolutionary theories assuming that father absence is a causal factor that accelerates reproductive development. However, an alternative interpretation suggests that offspring may reproduce earlier in the presence of half- or step-siblings as the indirect fitness benefits to investing in them are lower, relative to delaying reproduction and investing in full siblings. From this perspective, father absence may perform no causal role in facilitating the onset of menarche. Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, I find that individuals with only half- or step-siblings reach reproductive age earlier than those with only full siblings, with no independent effect of father absence. These results suggest that inclusive fitness benefits to investing in siblings, rather than father absence, may predict variation in age at menarche. These results provide a greater understanding of the adaptive mechanisms involved in reproductive decision-making, as well as potential implications for human life-history evolution and cooperative breeding more broadly. The Royal Society 2017-10 2017-10-18 /pmc/articles/PMC5665773/ /pubmed/29046373 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0464 Text en © 2017 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Evolutionary Biology Smith, Daniel O brother, where art thou? Investment in siblings for inclusive fitness benefits, not father absence, predicts earlier age at menarche |
title | O brother, where art thou? Investment in siblings for inclusive fitness benefits, not father absence, predicts earlier age at menarche |
title_full | O brother, where art thou? Investment in siblings for inclusive fitness benefits, not father absence, predicts earlier age at menarche |
title_fullStr | O brother, where art thou? Investment in siblings for inclusive fitness benefits, not father absence, predicts earlier age at menarche |
title_full_unstemmed | O brother, where art thou? Investment in siblings for inclusive fitness benefits, not father absence, predicts earlier age at menarche |
title_short | O brother, where art thou? Investment in siblings for inclusive fitness benefits, not father absence, predicts earlier age at menarche |
title_sort | o brother, where art thou? investment in siblings for inclusive fitness benefits, not father absence, predicts earlier age at menarche |
topic | Evolutionary Biology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5665773/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29046373 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0464 |
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