ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Grandmothering life histories and human pair bonding.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 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
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Environmental variability versus extrinsic mortality as correlates of mammalian lifespan: a pre-specified comparative analysis with phylogenetic and deep-time evidence.Biogerontology · 2026Article
- How the brain represents a romantic partner: Dissociable roles of the nucleus accumbens and anterior insula.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Pair-bond and survival in historical population: Marriage, widowhood, and social class.iScience · 2026Article
- A population threshold for dedicated teaching.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Targeting the Hunting Hypothesis: Review of Evidence From the Hadza.Evolutionary anthropology · 2025Review
- Revisiting "Grandmothers and the Evolution of Human Longevity" 2003 AJHB https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.10156.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- Evolution of Human Pair Bonds as a Consequence of Male-Biased Mating Sex Ratios?Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2025Article
- Relationship between energy acquisition and family composition in hunter-gatherers.Anthropological science : journal of the Anthropological Society of Nippon = Jinruigaku zasshi · 2024Article
- Comparative physiological anthropogeny: exploring molecular underpinnings of distinctly human phenotypes.Physiological reviews · 2023Review
- Life history impacts on infancy and the evolution of human social cognition.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Evolution of genetic networks for human creativity.Molecular psychiatry · 2022Review
- Targeted helping and cooperation in zoo-living chimpanzees and bonobos.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- Human-specific polymorphic pseudogenization ofFASEB bioAdvances · 2021Article
- Cognitive consequences of our grandmothering life history: cultural learning begins in infancy.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Sexual dimorphism in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) and human age-specific fertility.Journal of human evolution · 2020Article
- Hunter-gatherer studies and human evolution: A very selective review.American journal of physical anthropology · 2018Article
- Sex roles and adult sex ratios: insights from mammalian biology and consequences for primate behaviour.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Evolution of male strategies with sex-ratio-dependent pay-offs: connecting pair bonds with grandmothering.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Sex-specific rejection in mate-guarding pair formation in the intertidal copepod, Tigriopus californicus.PloS one · 2017Article
- Men's status and reproductive success in 33 nonindustrial societies: Effects of subsistence, marriage system, and reproductive strategy.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The evolution of distinctively human life history and social organization is generally attributed to paternal provisioning based on pair bonds. Here we develop an alternative argument that connects the evolution of human pair bonds to the male-biased mating sex ratios that accompanied the evolution of human life history. We simulate an agent-based model of the grandmother hypothesis, compare simulated sex ratios to data on great apes and human hunter-gatherers, and note associations between a preponderance of males and mate guarding across taxa. Then we explore a recent model that highlights the importance of mating sex ratios for differences between birds and mammals and conclude that lessons for human evolution cannot ignore mammalian reproductive constraints. In contradiction to our claim that male-biased sex ratios are characteristically human, female-biased ratios are reported in some populations. We consider the likelihood that fertile men are undercounted and conclude that the mate-guarding hypothesis for human pair bonds gains strength from explicit links with our grandmothering life history.
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.