Reproductive cessation in female mammals (original) (raw)
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- Published: 01 April 1998
Nature volume 392, pages 807–811 (1998)Cite this article
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Abstract
In female mammals, fertility declines abruptly at an advanced age. The human menopause is one example, but reproductive cessation has also been documented in non-human primates, rodents, whales, dogs, rabbits, elephants and domestic livestock1,2,3. The human menopause has been considered an evolutionary adaptation4,5,6,7 assuming that elderly women avoid the increasing complications of continued childbirth to better nurture their current children and grandchildren. But an abrupt reproductive decline might be only a non-adaptive by-product of life-history patterns. Because so many individuals die from starvation, disease and predation, detrimental genetic traits can persist (or even be favoured) as long as their deleterious effects are delayed until an advanced age is reached, and, for a given pattern of mortality, there should be an age by which selection would be too weak to prevent the onset of reproductive senescence4,5,8. We provide a systematic test of these alternatives using field data from two species in which grandmothers frequently engage in kin-directed behaviour. Both species show abrupt age-specific changes in reproductive performance that are characteristic of menopause. But elderly females do not suffer increased mortality costs of reproduction, nor do post-reproductive females enhance the fitness of grandchildren or older children. Instead, reproductive cessation appears to result from senescence.
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Acknowledgements
We thank E. C. Birney, M. Borgerhoff Mulder, E. L. Charnov, C. E. Finch, K. Hawkes, P. A. Hunt, M. McClintock, D. Promislow, A. R. Rogers, F. S. vom Saal and P. M. Wise for comments and discussion. Fieldwork on the baboons was supported by the Jane Goodall Institute and grants from the Physical Anthropology program at NSF; the lion study was supported by the LTREB program at NSF.
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Authors and Affiliations
- Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, 1987 Upper Buford Circle, St Paul, 55108, Minnesota, USA
Craig Packer - Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, 02912, Rhode Island, USA
Marc Tatar - Gombe Stream Research Centre, Box 185, Kigoma, Tanzania
Anthony Collins
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Correspondence toCraig Packer.
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Packer, C., Tatar, M. & Collins, A. Reproductive cessation in female mammals.Nature 392, 807–811 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/33910
- Received: 15 December 1997
- Accepted: 09 February 1998
- Published: 01 April 1998
- Issue Date: 23 April 1998
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/33910
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