Women's height, reproductive success and the evolution of sexual dimorphism in modern humans

Recent studies have shown that, in contemporary populations, tall men have greater reproductive success than shorter men. This appears to be due to their greater ability to attract mates. To our knowledge, no comparable results have yet been reported for women. This study used data from Britain'...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Biological sciences, 2002-09, Vol.269 (1503), p.1919-1923
Main Author: Nettle, Daniel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Biological Evolution
Body Height
Childlessness
Children
Choice Behavior
Female
Fertility
Height
Human Evolution
Humans
Male
Marriage
Mate Choice
Mating behavior
Men
Menstruation
Reproduction
Reproductive success
Sex Characteristics
Sexual Dimorphism
Social Class
Social classes
Social evolution
Womens health
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Recent studies have shown that, in contemporary populations, tall men have greater reproductive success than shorter men. This appears to be due to their greater ability to attract mates. To our knowledge, no comparable results have yet been reported for women. This study used data from Britain's National Child Development Study to examine the life histories of a nationally representative group of women. Height was weakly but significantly related to reproductive success. The relationship was U-shaped, with deficits at the extremes of height. This pattern was largely due to poor health among extremely tall and extremely short women. However, the maximum reproductive success was found below the mean height for women. Thus, selection appears to be sexually disruptive in this population, favouring tall men and short women. Over evolutionary time, such a situation tends to maintain sexual dimorphism. Men do not use stature as a positive mate-choice criterion as women do. It is argued that there is good evolutionary reason for this, because men are orientated towards cues of fertility, and female height, being positively related to age of sexual maturity, is not such a cue.
ISSN:0962-8452
1471-2954
DOI:10.1098/rspb.2002.2111