Comparative Ecology of Adaptive Mechanisms of Human Populations in Diversified Melanesian Environment

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Despite different languages, the Samo and Kubor in foothills had 92% endogamous rate due to maintaining reproduction under the conditions of ca. 0.5 premarital death rate and <4.0 completed fertility. Contrast to the Samo/Kubor who depended on plant foods for >90% food energy, the neighboring Lake Murray populations consumed fish, and their protein intake was high and their urinary mercury was high (10-15 mug/g creatinine).For the Gidra in lowland, major- and micronutrient intakes differed slightly from that in 1981. Heart-rate monitoring disclosed per-day energy expenditure averaged 3,500 kcal, which accords with their energy intake and is markedly higher than 2,000 kcal among the Mountain Ok. Analyses of hemoglobin, serum ferritin, zinc etc of 700 blood samples disclosed a large inter-village variation, which came from health sates than the intake levels. Modernization effects were observed in high out-migration and in-migration rates in the "more modernized" villages; this demonstra … More tes the mechanisms of changing human population structures.This research clarified human adaptive mechanisms in diversified Melanesian environment. In particular, (1) net reproduction rate in the Gidra had been <1.0 in the riverine villages due to malaria and other infections, but has rised during modernization, resulting 2.0% annual increase rate; in less modernized Mountain Ok and Samo/Kubor, the rate still remains at the replacement level due to, respectively, malaria and parasitic infections and low carrying capacity and nutritional insufficiency: (2) per-day per-person protein intake of the Gidra was 1.2 g, while that of Samo/Kubor was two-thirds and that of Mountain Ok, one-third; the different states were related to environmental conditions and subsistence pattern on one hand, and body physique and fertility on the other.This project cotributes to elaboration of field methodologies, particularly establishment of human population ecology by combining population dynamics, man-activity-environment system, and nutritional and health states. Less