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Natural selection favors the optimal allocation of energy and other limiting resources to reproduction. Human reproductive physiology displays characteristic patterns that can be viewed as mechanisms that help optimize reproductive effort in the face of environmental energetic constraints. Female ovarian function is particularly sensitive to energy balance and energy flux, resulting in a synchronization of conception with favorable energetic conditions. Reproductive effort during gestation is highly buffered from environmental energetic constraints, but the duration of gestation and final birthweight are both very sensitive to maternal energy availability. Milk production during lactation is relatively buffered from maternal energetic constraints as well, but the duration of lactational amenorrhea is sensitive to the relative metabolic load of lactation. Male gamete production is very insensitive to energetic constraints, but variation in testosterone production in response to both age and longer-lasting energetic conditions contributes to the modulation of somatic and behavioral aspects of male reproductive effort, aspects that are more energetically costly for a male. There is also new evidence that testosterone may also help to modulate the trade-off between male parenting and mating effort.

The classic anthropological hypothesis known as the "obstetrical dilemma" is a well-known explanation for human altriciality, a condition that has significant implications for human social and behavioral evolution. The hypothesis holds that antagonistic selection for a large neonatal brain and a narrow, bipedal-adapted birth canal poses a problem for childbirth; the hominin "solution" is to truncate gestation, resulting in an altricial neonate. This explanation for human altriciality based on pelvic constraints persists despite data linking human life history to that of other species. Here, we present evidence that challenges the importance of pelvic morphology and mechanics in the evolution of human gestation and altriciality. Instead, our analyses suggest that limits to maternal metabolism are the primary constraints on human gestation length and fetal growth. Although pelvic remodeling and encephalization during hominin evolution contributed to the present parturitional difficulty, there is little evidence that pelvic constraints have altered the timing of birth.bipedalism | EGG hypothesis | energetics | metabolic crossover hypothesis | pregnancy E utherian mammals vary widely in their degree of development at birth. Altricial species (e.g., rodents and some carnivores) are characterized by a large number of littermates and short gestation lengths, resulting in relatively undeveloped brains, a lack of specialization in corporal development, and feebleness at birth. Altricial neonates are usually hairless and dependent on external sources for warmth, and their sensory organs are often closed. In contrast, precocial species (e.g., bovids, equids, cetaceans) are born when they are highly developed with fully open and operating sensory organs. Immediately after birth, precocial neonates begin behaving similarly to adults in movement, sensory perception, and communication. Neonate development is thought to reflect each species' evolved maternal investment strategy, as well as environmental pressures, such as resource availability and predation risk (1-3).Humans differ from other primates in terms of neonatal development. Our neonates are born with the least-developed brains of any primate, with brains less than 30% of adult size (4). As a result, although human newborns are precocial in other respects, our neonates are neurologically and behaviorally altricial. Portmann (5) coined the term "secondary altriciality" to describe the distinct state of human neonates compared with the kind of primary or primitive altriciality experienced by other mammals and derived with respect to primate precociality. He estimated that instead of 9 mo, a gestation period of 18-21 mo would be required for humans to be born at neurological and cognitive developmental stage equivalent to that achieved by a chimpanzee neonate (see also ref. 6).Human altriciality has long been seen as an important hominin trait, not just because of its departure from the other primates but because of the reproductive and social strategies that vulnerable ...

Physical characteristics, such as breast size and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), function as important features used by human males to assess female attractiveness. Males supposedly pay attention to these features because they serve as cues to fecundity and health. Here, we document that women with higher breast-to-underbreast ratio (large breasts) and women with relatively low WHR (narrow waists) have higher fecundity as assessed by precise measurements of daily levels of 17-beta-oestradiol (E2) and progesterone. Furthermore, women who are characterized by both narrow waists and large breasts have 26% higher mean E2 and 37% higher mean mid-cycle E2 levels than women from three groups with other combinations of body-shape variables, i.e. low WHR with small breasts and high WHR with either large or small breasts. Such gains in hormone levels among the preferred mates may lead to a substantial rise in the probability of conception, thus providing a significant fitness benefit.