Father–offspring resemblance predicts paternal investment in humans

Alvergne, Alexandra; Faurie, Charlotte; Raymond, Michel

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.03.019

Cited by 140 publications

(114 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…The study was conducted in traditional villages in rural Senegal, located on the western coast of Africa (see ref. 41 for details on the population). The most common ethnic groups are the Sereer and Wolof.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personality and reproductive success in a high-fertility human population

Alvergne

Jokela

Lummaa

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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155

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The existence of interindividual differences in personality traits poses a challenge to evolutionary thinking. Although research on the ultimate consequences of personality differences in nonhuman animals has recently undergone a surge of interest, our understanding of whether and how personality influences reproductive decisions in humans has remained limited and informed primarily by modern societies with low mortality-fertility schedules. Taking an evolutionary approach, we use data from a contemporary polygynous high-fertility human population living in rural Senegal to investigate whether personality dimensions are associated with key life-history traits in humans, i.e., quantity and quality of offspring. We show that personality dimensions predict reproductive success differently in men and women in such societies and, in women, are associated with a trade-off between offspring quantity and quality. In women, neuroticism positively predicts the number of children, both between and within polygynous families. Furthermore, within the low social class, offspring quality (i.e., child nutritional status) decreases with a woman's neuroticism, indicating a reproductive trade-off between offspring quantity and quality. Consistent with this, maximal fitness is achieved by women at an intermediate neuroticism level. In men, extraversion was found to be a strong predictor of high social class and polygyny, with extraverted men producing more offspring than their introverted counterparts. These results have implications for the consideration of alternative adaptive hypotheses in the current debate on the maintenance of personality differences and the role of individual factors in fertility patterns in contemporary humans.Big Five dimensions | life-history traits | polygyny I ndividual personality differences [also termed behavioral syndromes, temperament, or coping styles (1)] are rapidly becoming one of the most frequently studied factors underlying phenotypic variation within animal populations (2). The existence of persistent variation in personality traits poses the question of how natural selection acts on those traits and how the alternative phenotypes can coexist (3). A number of studies in nonhuman animals (>30, reviewed in ref. 4) indicate that differences in individual personality traits are associated with fitness outcomes that vary according to the individual characteristics or environments, suggesting that adaptive explanation for the interindividual variation in animal personality may be likely. In contrast, although human sciences have a long history of investigating individual personality differences from a psychological and neurobiological perspective (5), surprisingly few empirical studies have examined the ultimate causes of variation in personality dimensions in humans to date (6-9). Such knowledge, however, is critical to understanding how natural selection could shape interindividual differences in response to socioecological pressures not only from an evolutionary biological perspective but also...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personality and reproductive success in a high-fertility human population

Alvergne

Jokela

Lummaa

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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155

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“…Many cues reflect relatedness in non-human primates, including visual appearance [39], vocalisations [40] and odours [41,42] and exciting new findings suggest that both human [43] and non-human primates [44] may use such cues in kin discrimination. Some evidence suggests that choice for MHC dissimilarity may not simply result from inbreeding avoidance based on alternative cues (due to correlations between MHC and genome-wide dissimilarity).…”

Section: There Are No Global Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The hidden benefits of sex: Evidence for MHC‐associated mate choice in primate societies

Setchell

Huchard

2010

BioEssays

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Major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-associated mate choice is thought to give offspring a fitness advantage through disease resistance. Primates offer a unique opportunity to understand MHC-associated mate choice within our own zoological order, while their social diversity provides an exceptional setting to examine the genetic determinants and consequences of mate choice in animal societies. Although mate choice is constrained by social context, increasing evidence shows that MHCdependent mate choice occurs across the order in a variety of socio-sexual systems and favours mates with dissimilar, diverse or specific genotypes non-exclusively. Recent research has also identified phenotypic indicators of MHC quality. Moreover, novel findings rehabilitate the importance of olfactory cues in signalling MHC genes and influencing primate mating decisions. These findings underline the importance to females of selecting a sexual partner of high genetic quality, as well as the generality of the role of MHC genes in sexual selection.

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“…As for birds, EPP in humans creates sexual conflict that is resolved to some extent by behaviors (mate guarding, kin recognition), physiologies (concealed ovulation), and the advantages of sexual fidelity, particularly with respect to parental care (Benshoof and Thornhill 1979;Burley 1979;Alvergne et al 2009). We have focused this review on sexual conflict in birds, but we suggest that the perspectives we have taken here-on the players, changes in conflict across episodes of the breeding cycle, and the traits that evolve to reduce conflictare generally applicable to the study of sexual conflict in any organism in which females mate multiply.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexual Conflict Arising from Extrapair Matings in Birds

Chaine

Montgomerie

Lyon

2015

Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol

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The discovery that extrapair copulation (EPC) and extrapair paternity (EPP) are common in birds led to a paradigm shift in our understanding of the evolution of mating systems. The prevalence of extrapair matings in pair-bonded species sets the stage for sexual conflict, and a recent focus has been to consider how this conflict can shape variation in extrapair mating rates. Here, we invert the causal arrow and consider the consequences of extrapair matings for sexual conflict. Extrapair matings shift sexual conflict from a simple two-player (male vs. female) game to a game with three or more players, the nature of which we illustrate with simple diagrams that highlight the net costs and benefits of extrapair matings to each player. This approach helps identify the sorts of traits that might be under selection because of sexual conflict. Whether EPP is driven primarily by the extrapair male or the within-pair female profoundly influences which players are in conflict, but the overall pattern of conflict varies little among different mating systems. Different aspects of conflict are manifest at different stages of the breeding cycle and can be profitably considered as distinct episodes of selection caused by conflict. This perspective is illuminating both because conflict between specific players can change across episodes and because the traits that evolve to mediate conflict likely differ between episodes. Although EPP clearly leads to sexual conflict, we suggest that the link between sexual conflict and multiple paternity might be usefully understood by examining how deviations from lifetime sexual monogamy influence sexual conflict.T he development of genetic tools for determining parentage fundamentally altered our understanding of animal mating systems (Jeffreys et al. 1985;Avise 1996;Reynolds 1996) and provided invaluable insights into the consequences and causes of females mating with more than one male. Particularly for the study of birds, these methods revealed that social pair bonds often fail to match the actual patterns of copulations that produced offspring (Gowaty and Karlin 1984;Birkhead and Møller 1992;Reynolds 1996;Petrie and Kempenaers 1998), revolutionizing the study of avian mating systems. Extensive research and two recent reviews point out the progress we have made in this field and show how little we still understand extrapair behavior (Griffith et al. 2002;Westneat and Stewart 2003).

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Father–offspring resemblance predicts paternal investment in humans

Cited by 140 publications

References 61 publications

Personality and reproductive success in a high-fertility human population

Personality and reproductive success in a high-fertility human population

The hidden benefits of sex: Evidence for MHC‐associated mate choice in primate societies

Sexual Conflict Arising from Extrapair Matings in Birds

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