Costs and Consequences of Reproduction

: Lummaa V

: 2010

: FRONT COLLECT

: The Frontiers Collection

: 111

: 126

: 16

: 978-3-642-12142-5

: 1612-3018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12142-5_9

The life history of women is characterized by several unusual patterns women have a relatively late age at maturity compared to other primates they produce offspring at short inter-birth intervals, and typically have many dependent offspring of varying ages to care for simultaneously Women then lose their potential to bear children at menopause but can live a few decades afterwards Such a reproductive strategy involves several trade-offs and costs of reproduction to future success that have to be optimized across the entire lifespan This chapter summarizes evidence from humans on the costs of reproduction First I discuss the short-and long-term effects of investment in reproduction on the survival patterns of individuals Second, I address how current reproductive investment affects the ability to invest in future reproductive events Third, I review the evidence for such costs of reproduction and trade-offs changing with the age of the individual and across different environments Trade-offs are predicted to be most severe among the very young and senescing females and when resources are limited Finally, I investigate the heritable genetic basis for individual differences in the consequences of reproduction, and how heritabilities and genetic trade-offs between traits vary with age and across environmental conditions