ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015
Early-life reproduction is associated with increased mortality risk but enhanced lifetime fitness in pre-industrial humans.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 47 citations in OpenAlex.
- Interaction Between Age and Individual Heterogeneity Shapes Breeding Probability in a Long-Lived Marine Ectotherm.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Natural selection on reproductive timing varies by education in twentieth-century Estonia.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Longitudinal evidence linking childhood energetics, maturation, skeletal muscle mass and adult human male sociosexuality.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Apolipoprotein E polymorphisms and female fertility in a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer's disease.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Stochasticity Explains Nongenetic Inheritance of Lifespan and Apparent Trade-Offs between Reproduction and Aging.Aging biology · 2023Article
- Male survival advantage on the Baja California peninsula.Biology letters · 2020Article
- Sons accelerate maternal aging in a wild mammal.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Lifetime Fitness in Wild Female Baboons: Trade-Offs and Individual Heterogeneity in Quality.The American naturalist · 2019Article
- Effects of macronutrient intake on the lifespan and fecundity of the marula fruit fly,Ecology and evolution · 2017Article
- Older fathers' children have lower evolutionary fitness across four centuries and in four populations.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Fitness consequences of peak reproductive effort in a resource pulse system.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Elevated reproduction does not affect telomere dynamics and oxidative stress.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2016Article
- Elephants born in the high stress season have faster reproductive ageing.Scientific reports · 2015Article
- The Influence of Female Reproductive Factors on Longevity: A Systematized Narrative Review of Epidemiological Studies.Gerontology & geriatric medicineReview
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The physiology of reproductive senescence in women is well understood, but the drivers of variation in senescence rates are less so. Evolutionary theory predicts that early-life investment in reproduction should be favoured by selection at the cost of reduced survival and faster reproductive senescence. We tested this hypothesis using data collected from preindustrial Finnish church records. Reproductive success increased up to age 25 and was relatively stable until a decline from age 41. Women with higher early-life fecundity (ELF; producing more children before age 25) subsequently had higher mortality risk, but high ELF was not associated with accelerated senescence in annual breeding success. However, women with higher ELF experienced faster senescence in offspring survival. Despite these apparent costs, ELF was under positive selection: individuals with higher ELF had higher lifetime reproductive success. These results are consistent with previous observations in both humans and wild vertebrates that more births and earlier onset of reproduction are associated with reduced survival, and with evolutionary theory predicting trade-offs between early reproduction and later-life survival. The results are particularly significant given recent increases in maternal ages in many societies and the potential consequences for offspring health and fitness.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.