Humans as a model for understanding biological fundamentals

Abstract

How special are humans? This question drives scholarly output across both the sciences and the humanities. Whereas some disciplines, and the humanities in particular, aim at gaining a better understanding of humans per se , most biologists ultimately aim to understand life in general. This raises the question of whether and when humans are acceptable, or even desirable, models of biological fundamentals. Especially for basic biological processes, non-human species are generally accepted as a relevant model to study topics for which studying humans is impractical, impossible, or ethically inadvisable, but the reverse is controversial: are humans ‘too unique’ to be informative with respect to biological fundamentals relevant to other species? Or are there areas where we share key components, or for which our very uniqueness serves to allow novel explorations? In this special feature, authors from disciplines including biology, psychology, anthropology, neuroscience and philosophy tackle this question. Their overall conclusion is a qualified yes: humans do tell us about biological fundamentals, in some contexts. We hope this special feature will spur a discussion that will lead to a more careful delineation of the similarities and the differences between humans and other species, and how these impact the study of biological fundamentals.

The long-lasting legacy of reproduction: lifetime reproductive success shapes expected genetic contributions of humans after 10 generations

“…[ 10 ]; this study) in particular, as the two do not necessarily equate. Furthermore, while our study has highlighted the ability of human genealogical data to provide insight into human evolution [ 51 , 52 ], and the estimation of fitness more broadly, applying these methods to similar data for an array of human populations (see [ 53 ] for a review) will allow us to quantify the degree to which these findings hold across cultures, environments and time.…”

The long-lasting legacy of reproduction: lifetime reproductive success shapes expected genetic contributions of humans after ten generations

“…this study) and examining the relative role of drift versus natural selection in shaping variation in IGC (61). Furthermore, while our study has highlighted the ability of human genealogical data to provide insight into human evolution (62,63), and the measurement of fitness more broadly, applying these methods to similar data for an array of human populations (see (64), for a review) will allow us to quantify the degree to which these findings vary across cultures, environments and time.…”

Heritable spouse effects increase evolutionary potential of human reproductive timing

“…Our study demonstrates that genealogical databases hold enormous potential, not only to enable perspectives of the evolutionary dynamics regulating human populations (i.e. human evolutionary demography) but also to offer insights into biological processes that are not amenable to study in other animal species [44,45]. From the perspective of the husband, the reproductive timing of his wife represents an extended phenotype [46].…”