As tall as my peers – similarity in body height between migrants and hosts

Bogin, Barry; Hermanussen, Michael; Scheffler, Christiane

doi:10.1127/anthranz/2018/0828

Cited by 32 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…." (Bogin et al 2018) might influence body height and therefore contribute to the secu- Table 2. Linear modeling of body height for the swiss network for different centrality measures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of network properties on a migration induced secular height trend by Monte Carlo simulation

Fritz

Makeyeva²,

Staub

et al. 2019

anthranz

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Background: Recent research reported height biased migration of taller individuals and a Monte Carlo simulation showed that such preferential migration of taller individuals into network hubs can induce a secular trend of height. In the simulation model taller agents in the hubs raise the overall height of all individuals in the network by a community effect. However, it could be seen that the actual network structure influences the strength of this effect. In this paper the background and the influence of the network structure on the strength of the secular trend by migration is investigated. Material and methods: Three principal network types are analyzed: networks derived from street connections in Switzerland, more regular fishing net like networks and randomly generated ones. Our networks have between 10 and 152 nodes and between 20 and 307 edges connecting the nodes. Depending on the network size between 5.000 and 90.000 agents with an average height of 170 cm (SD 6.5 cm) are initially released into the network. In each iteration new agents are regenerated based on the actual average body height of the previous iteration and, to a certain proportion, corrected by body heights in the neighboring nodes. After generating new agents, a certain number of them migrated into neighbor nodes, the model let preferentially taller agents migrate into network hubs. Migration is balanced by back migration of the same number of agents from nodes with high centrality measures to less connected nodes. The latter is random as well, but not biased by the agents height. Furthermore the distribution of agents per node and their correlation to the centrality of the nodes is varied in a systematic manner. After 100 iterations, the secular trend, i.e. the gain in body height for the different networks, is investigated in relation to the network properties. Results: We observe an increase of average agent body height after 100 iterations if height biased migration is enabled. The increase rate depends on the height of the neighboring factor, the population distribution, the relationship between population in the nodes and their centrality as well as on the network topology. Networks with uniform like distributions of the agents in the nodes, uncorrelated associations between node centrality and agent number per node, as well as very heterogeneous networks with very different node centralities lead to biggest gains in average body height. Conclusion: Our simulations show, that height biased migration into network hubs can possibly contribute to the secular trend of height increase in the human population. The strength of this "tall by migration" event depends on the actual properties of the underlying network. There is a possible significance of this mechanism for social networks, when hubs are represented by individuals and edges as their personal relationships. However, the required high number of iterations to achieve significant effects in more natural network structures in our models requires further studies to test the relevan...

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“…." (Bogin et al 2018) might influence body height and therefore contribute to the secu- Table 2. Linear modeling of body height for the swiss network for different centrality measures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of network properties on a migration induced secular height trend by Monte Carlo simulation

Fritz

Makeyeva²,

Staub

et al. 2019

anthranz

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“…Migranten passen sich auch hinsichtlich ihrer Körperhöhe an die neue Gesellschaft an [21]. Darum ist Variation innerhalb einer Familie so gering: Familien gehören zu den stärksten sozialen Gruppen.…”

Section: Die Biokulturelle Perspektiveunclassified

Genetik der Körperhöhe

Hermanussen¹,

Scheffler

Bogin³

2019

Adipositas - Ursachen, Folgeerkrankungen, Therapie

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Zusammenfassung Hintergrund Noch immer gründen heutige Analysen genetischer Zwillings- und Familienstudien auf mathematischen Ansätzen des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts, namentlich von Galton, Pearson und Fisher, und führen zu konventionellen Schätzwerten für die Heritabilität der Körperhöhe zwischen h² = 0,87 und h² = 0,93 bei Männern und zwischen h² = 0,68 und h² = 0,84 bei Frauen. Diese Werte sind wesentlich höher als moderne Schätzungen auf der Basis genomweiter Assoziationsstudien (GWAS), mit denen sich zwischen 12,3 % und 49 % der Körperhöhenvarianz im Erwachsenenalter erklären lassen. Diese so genannte „missing heritability“ gibt Anlass zu Missverständnissen. Diskussion Wir nehmen eine biokulturelle Perspektive ein, um Entwicklungsmerkmale zu verstehen, die nur auf den ersten Blick erblich erscheinen. Innerhalb sozialer Gruppen dient Körpergröße als Signal. Kompetitive Wachstumsstrategien (competitive growth strategies) und strategische Wachstumsanpassungen (strategic growth adjustments) insbesondere im Hinblick auf die Gefahr, aus einer führenden sozialen Rolle verdrängt zu werden (threat of being displaced) sind bei sozialen Säugern beschrieben und spielen sehr wahrscheinlich auch in menschlichen Sozialstrukturen eine wesentliche Rolle. Die Körperhöhe eines Menschen hängt von der Körperhöhe anderer Mitglieder seiner Peer Group ab. Im vergangenen Jahrhundert wurden Körperhöhentrends von bis zu 20 cm in manchen Populationen beobachtet (säkulare Trends). Dies ist Ausdruck von phänotypischer Plastizität und war Galton, Pearson und Fisher unbekannt. Schlussfolgerung Die beschriebene „missing heritability“ für Körperhöhe spiegelt die Diskrepanz zwischen moderner Wissenschaft und überholten Vermengungen von deterministischen und politischen Ideen des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts wider.

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“…Psychosocial growth restriction is well known. We reported that migrants adjust in height towards their hosts and reviewed the findings by others that described the spread of obesity in social networks, the similarity in weight among people who know each other and the remarkable evidence that people of the same community are similar in height. People living among tall people are tall; people living among short people are short.…”

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confidence: 92%

The impact of social identity and social dominance on the regulation of human growth: A viewpoint

Hermanussen¹,

Bogin

Hermanussen

2019

Acta Paediatrica

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The clinical audience is wedded to the idea that stunting is nutritional. Also among the nutrition community, there is 'convergence on the use of length-for-age as the indicator of choice in monitoring the long-term impact of chronic nutritional deficiency'. 1 These discernments are puzzling. The associations between nutrition and growth, and also those between water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH) and growth, are anything but obvious. Sguassero et al 2 meta-analysed community-based supplementary feeding in children under 5 years in low-and middle-income countries and concluded that supplementary feeding has a negligible impact on child growth. A systematic scoping review of interventions promoting better nutrition for infants and children living in slums in low-income nations identified 22 unique studies of which only 16 were assessed effective. 3 Ten of the effective studies increased body mass, especially fat, but had either no impact on stunting or were associated with greater stunting. The six interventions with a positive impact on stunting had small effects, with the mean improvement close to the typical value for measurement error. A Cochrane systematic review of interventions to improve WASH practices and their relation to nutritional status 4 identified 14 studies involving 22 241 children at baseline and nutrition outcome data for 9469 children, with no significant effects of WASH interventions on any of the measures of growth in children under 5 years. The observation that nutrition and growth in height are not necessarily intertwined is not new. In this journal in 2018, we reviewed studies of 'forgotten' (German language, print-only) 19th-and early 20th-century literature of weight and height growth of malnourished school-age children during refeeding. Height catch-up after starvation was greater than catch-up reported in modern nutritionintervention studies and allowed for unimpaired adult height, but this was only for children from intact families of middle-class social background. In contrast, orphans and children from poor social background failed to recover and paralleled the growth patterns ob-

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As tall as my peers – similarity in body height between migrants and hosts

Cited by 32 publications

References 51 publications

Influence of network properties on a migration induced secular height trend by Monte Carlo simulation

Influence of network properties on a migration induced secular height trend by Monte Carlo simulation

Genetik der Körperhöhe

The impact of social identity and social dominance on the regulation of human growth: A viewpoint

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