Measuring selection in contemporary human populations

Stearns, Stephen C.; Byars, Sean G.; Govindaraju, Diddahally R.; Ewbank, Douglas C.

doi:10.1038/nrg2831

Cited by 193 publications

(222 citation statements)

References 105 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

199

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The idea that selection takes many millennia to produce noticeable changes in a population is at odds with data indicating that within human populations, changes in the means of heritable traits such as height, weight, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, age at first birth, and age at menopause can occur due to selection over a relatively short period of time (Stearns et al, 2010). Selection operating over the course of millennia (as in the present case) would be expected to produce quite considerable microevolutionary change.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holocene Selection for Variants Associated With General Cognitive Ability: Comparing Ancient and Modern Genomes

Woodley

Younuskunju

Balan³

et al. 2017

Twin Res Hum Genet

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Human populations living during the Holocene underwent considerable microevolutionary change. It has been theorized that the transition of Holocene populations into agrarianism and urbanization brought about culture-gene co-evolution that favored via directional selection genetic variants associated with higher general cognitive ability (GCA). To examine whether GCA might have risen during the Holocene, we compare a sample of 99 ancient Eurasian genomes (ranging from 4.56 to 1.21 kyr BP) with a sample of 503 modern European genomes (F st = 0.013), using three different cognitive polygenic scores (130 SNP, 9 SNP and 11 SNP). Significant differences favoring the modern genomes were found for all three polygenic scores (odds ratios = 0.92, p = 001; .81, p = 037; and .81, p = .02 respectively). These polygenic scores also outperformed the majority of scores assembled from random SNPs generated via a Monte Carlo model (between 76.4% and 84.6%). Furthermore, an indication of increasing positive allele count over 3.25 kyr was found using a subsample of 66 ancient genomes (r = 0.22, p one-tailed = .04). These observations are consistent with the expectation that GCA rose during the Holocene.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holocene Selection for Variants Associated With General Cognitive Ability: Comparing Ancient and Modern Genomes

Woodley

Younuskunju

Balan³

et al. 2017

Twin Res Hum Genet

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…That is, even if fertility is completely socially determined, with no genetic influence, we should expect fertility to rise if it is heritable, which it clearly is. Typical population projections inadvertently assume that the heritability of fertility is near zero, an assumption that is not supported by empirical observations [31,33,45,46]. Proposition 2.…”

Section: What Does This Mean For Irreversibility?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, age at first birth is negatively correlated with fitness and is heritable [31,39], which means that all else being equal, age at first birth should decline rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org Phil. Trans.…”

Section: What Does This Mean For Irreversibility?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We briefly summarized a few findings above, showing that fertility is both correlated with fitness and that fitness-related traits are linked to specific alleles that should go up in frequency as those individuals have more children. Several additional studies have shown that natural selection is acting on humans in ways that favour increased fertility [31,39]. These studies are based on a range of approaches, from twin studies, to genome surveys, to studies of the relationship between fertility and fitness.…”

Section: What Does This Mean For Irreversibility?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We especially disagree with the notion that contraception breaks the link between human fertility and the processes of evolution. Although norms and preferences are clearly an essential part of fertility decisionmaking in humans (we consider that view non-controversial), both age at first birth and total number of births are genetically heritable [27,31,32], which by definition means they are partly under genetic control. Twin studies show heritability (often over 0.2) for number of children ever born for males and females and for age at first birth in females.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

What if fertility decline is not permanent? The need for an evolutionarily informed approach to understanding low fertility

Bürger

DeLong

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

‘Demographic transition theory’ assumes that fertility decline is irreversible. This commonly held assumption is based on observations of recent and historical reductions in fertility that accompany modernization and declining mortality. The irreversibility assumption, however, is highly suspect from an evolutionary point of view, because demographic traits are at least partially influenced by genetics and are responsive to social and ecological conditions. Nonetheless, an inevitable shift from high mortality and fertility to low mortality and fertility is used as a guiding framework for projecting human population sizes into the future. This paper reviews some theoretical and empirical evidence suggesting that the assumption of irreversibility is ill-founded, at least without considerable development in theory that incorporates evolutionary and ecological processes. We offer general propositions for how fertility could increase in the future, including natural selection on high fertility variants, the difficulty of maintaining universal norms and preferences in a large, diverse and economically differentiated population, and the escalating resource demands of modernization.

show abstract

Evolutionary Genetics

Arslan

Penke

2015

The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Evolutionary forces of selection, mutation, migration, and genetic drift interact to maintain heritable individual differences. Resolving the ostensible paradox posed by the fact that heritable differences in personality and intelligence, in spite of their links to mortality and fertility, have not been driven to fixation, is within the purview of evolutionary genetics. We introduce the tool kit available to psychologists who want to understand these forces. It assembles complementary tools from molecular and behavior genetics, as well as classical evolutionary psychology, including the study of genome‐wide associations, paternal age effects, inbreeding depression, developmental stability, and of course twins and families. We identify an unfortunate lack of cross‐pollination, but map ways in which these disciplines, which share a common evolutionary metatheory, could test the tacit assumptions inherent in much of our work. Although it may take some time and may in some cases be impossible to identify the causative genes behind individual differences, we make the case that understanding the evolutionary forces involved in their maintenance is a worthy task in its own right, permitting us to understand and predict the effects of changing mores, policy, and demographic trends.

show abstract

Measuring selection in contemporary human populations

Cited by 193 publications

References 105 publications

Holocene Selection for Variants Associated With General Cognitive Ability: Comparing Ancient and Modern Genomes

Holocene Selection for Variants Associated With General Cognitive Ability: Comparing Ancient and Modern Genomes

What if fertility decline is not permanent? The need for an evolutionarily informed approach to understanding low fertility

Evolutionary Genetics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About