Do human parents face a quantity-quality tradeoff?: Evidence from a Shuar community
Do human parents face a quantity-quality tradeoff?: Evidence from a Shuar community
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DOI：
10.1002/ajpa.20272
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发表时间：
2006-07-01
影响因子：
2.8
通讯作者：
Price, Michael E.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hagen, Edward H.;Barrett, H. Clark;Price, Michael E.
许多关于人类生活史的进化理论都认为，为了后代的产生，需要在数量和质量上进行权衡：后代少的父母比后代多的父母具有更高的生物适应性。然而，这种权衡的直接证据是混杂的。我们在厄瓜多尔Shuar狩猎园艺师社区测试了这一假设，使用儿童人体测量作为健康的代表。我们测量了家庭消费者/生产者（CP）比率对85名儿童和年轻人的身高、体重、皮褶厚度、手臂和小腿周长的影响。为了控制可能掩盖CP比对人体测量影响的“表型”相关因素，我们还测量了家庭花园生产力、财富和社会地位。年龄标准化变量的回归模型显示CP比对儿童生长和营养有显著的负影响。最大CP比（10）家庭儿童的年龄标准化身高和体重分别比最小CP比(2)家庭儿童低1.38和1.44个标准差。令人惊讶的是，花园生产力、财富和地位对健康代理几乎没有影响。然而，在地位和性别之间有一个有趣的和意想不到的相互作用：对于女性，而不是男性，更高的父亲地位与更高的代理值显着相关。
A number of evolutionary theories of human life history assume a quantity-quality tradeoff for offspring production: parents with fewer offspring can have higher biological fitness than those with more. Direct evidence for such a tradeoff, however, is mixed. We tested this assumption in a community of Ecuadorian Shuar hunter-horticulturalists, using child anthropometry as a proxy for fitness. We measured the impact of household consumer/producer (CP) ratio on height, weight, skinfold thicknesses, and arm and calf circumferences of 85 children and young adults. To control for possible "phenotypic" correlates that might mask the effect of CP ratio on anthropometry, we also measured household garden productivity, wealth, and social status. Regression models of the age-standardized variables indicated a significant negative impact of CP ratio on child growth and nutrition. The age-standardized height and weight of children in households with the largest CP ratio (10) were 1.38 and 1.44 standard deviations, respectively, below those of children in households with the smallest CP ratio (2). Surprisingly, garden productivity, wealth, and status had little to no effect on the fitness proxies. There was, however, an interesting and unexpected interaction between status and sex: for females, but not males, higher father status correlated significantly with higher values on the proxies.