Early-life environment and differences in costs of reproduction in a preindustrial human population.

ABSTRACT: Reproduction is predicted to trade-off with long-term maternal survival, but the survival costs often vary between individuals, cohorts and populations, limiting our understanding of this trade-off, which is central to life-history theory. One potential factor generating variation in reproductive costs is variation in developmental conditions, but the role of early-life environment in modifying the reproduction-survival trade-off has rarely been investigated. We quantified the effect of early-life environment on the trade-off between female reproduction and survival in pre-industrial humans by analysing individual-based life-history data for >80 birth cohorts collected from Finnish church records, and between-year variation in local crop yields, annual spring temperature, and infant mortal

SUBMITTER: Nenko I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6291071 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature