Human longevity at the cost of reproductive success: evidence from global data

A trade‐off between reproduction and somatic maintenance and hence survival is fundamental to life‐history theory. We investigated the relationship between female fecundity and longevity in Homo sapiens using data from 153 countries located all over the world. The raw correlation between life span a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of evolutionary biology 2000-05, Vol.13 (3), p.409-414
Main Authors: Thomas, F, Teriokhin, A T, Renaud, F, De Meeus, T, Guegan, J F
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
comparative analysis
Demography
Homo sapiens
Human health and pathology
Humanities and Social Sciences
Life Sciences
reproduction
somatic maintenance
spatial‐series
Tissues and Organs
trade‐off
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Summary:A trade‐off between reproduction and somatic maintenance and hence survival is fundamental to life‐history theory. We investigated the relationship between female fecundity and longevity in Homo sapiens using data from 153 countries located all over the world. The raw correlation between life span and fecundity was highly significant with a negative trend. After longevity and fecundity estimates were controlled for by confounding factors such as historical (i.e. human ethnic groups), religious, geographical, socio‐economical and parasitological components, we still observed a negative relationship between the mean female fecundity and the mean longevity in a country. These findings support the hypothesis for the existence of a trade‐off between these two key life‐history traits in humans, as also reported by a recent single longitudinal study in England.
ISSN:1010-061X
1420-9101
DOI:10.1046/j.1420-9101.2000.00190.x