A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Early-life environment and differences in costs of reproduction in a preindustrial human population
Authors: Ilona Nenko, Adam D. Hayward, Mirre J. P. Simons, Virpi Lummaa
Publisher: PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
Publication year: 2018
Journal: PLoS ONE
Journal name in source: PLOS ONE
Journal acronym: PLOS ONE
Article number: ARTN e0207236
Volume: 13
Issue: 12
Number of pages: 16
ISSN: 1932-6203
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207236
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/37618636
Reproduction is predicted to trade-off with long-term maternal survival, but the survival costs often vary between individuals, cohorts and populations, limiting our understanding of this trade-off, which is central to life-history theory. One potential factor generating variation in reproductive costs is variation in developmental conditions, but the role of early-life environment in modifying the reproduction-survival trade-off has rarely been investigated. We quantified the effect of early-life environment on the trade-off between female reproduction and survival in pre-industrial humans by analysing individual-based life-history data for >80 birth cohorts collected from Finnish church records, and between-year variation in local crop yields, annual spring temperature, and infant mortality as proxies of early-life environment. We predicted that women born during poor environmental conditions would show higher costs of reproduction in terms of survival compared to women born in better conditions. We found profound variation between the studied cohorts in the correlation between reproduction and longevity and in the early-life environment these cohorts were exposed to, but no evidence that differences in early-life environment or access to wealth affected the trade-off between reproduction and survival. Our results therefore do not support the hypothesis that differences in developmental conditions underlie the observed heterogeneity in reproduction -survival trade-off between individuals.
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