Life History Theory and Evolutionary Psychology

Abstract

The evolution of life is the result of a process whereby variant forms compete to harvest energy from the environment and convert it into replicates of those forms. Individuals "capture" energy from the environment-for example through foraging, hunting, or cultivating-and "allocate" it to reproduction and survival-enhancing activities. Selection favors individuals who efficiently capture energy and effectively allocate it to enhance fitness within their ecological niche.

Middle Childhood: An Evolutionary-Developmental Synthesis

“…My colleagues and I (Del Giudice and Belsky 2011;Del Giudice et al 2009, 2012 have argued that the transition to middle childhood is a switch point in the development of life history strategies, which are coordinate suites of morphological, physiological, and behavioral traits that determine how organisms allocate their resources to key biological activities such as growth, reproduction, mating, and parenting (for a non-technical overview of life history theory, see Del Giudice et al 2015). At the level of Fig.…”

“…If so, it should be possible to exploit that phase to maximize the efficacy of focused interventions-including pharmacological ones. Of course, this would require a better understanding of how different hormonal and neurobiological systems interact during the transition to middle childhood; the existing evidence points to a central role of the hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenal (HPA) axis, the hypothalamic-pituitaryadrenal-thyroid (HPT) axis, and the insulin/ insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) signaling systems as mediators of life history allocations, not just in humans but in other vertebrates as well (see Del Giudice et al 2015;Ellis and Del Giudice 2014). Those systems might be used as direct targets for intervention, but also as "endophenotypes" or early indicators of the efficacy of interventions.…”

Trade-off shapes diversity in eco-evolutionary dynamics

“…Trade-offs that regulate energy investment in different life-history strategies are imposed by physical laws such as energy conservation or other thermodynamic constraints [40,42,47].…”

Can family risk-factors moderate the link between psychopathy and life-history strategy?

“…Most authors emphasize three crucial trade-offs in LHS and all of them are related to reproduction (Del Giudice, Gangestad, & Kaplan, 2016). The first comprises current and future reproduction: organisms may reproduce at an earlier age or delay reproduction in order to invest in growth and resources.…”