Life Historical Perspectives on Human Reproductive Aging

Abstract

A commentary is offered on the chapters that comprise the section on Theoretical Foundations, emphasizing novel contributions of each. Three additional points are then made. First, while the biology of reproductive aging may be common to all human populations, its actual course can be expected to vary between individuals and between populations depending on ecological conditions and developmental histories. Second, increasing fertility (such as that typical of humans compared with hominoid relatives and imputed ancestral species) decreases the opportunity and impact of contributions from ascendant relatives and increases the opportunity and impact of contributions from collateral and descendent relatives in promoting the fitness of a focal individual. Finally, an argument is made that the major change in human life history physiology in the Pleistocene has been the extension of adult lifespan, not any change in ovarian physiology or rate of reproductive senescence, and that extended lifespan created a selection pressure for the emergence of indirect reproductive effort among postreproductive individuals, not the reverse.