ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2016
Why do women stop reproducing before menopause? A life-history approach to age at last birth.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Exploring the shifting landscape of delayed motherhood in India: a comprehensive analysis using joinpoint and age-period-cohort analysis.BMC women's health · 2025Article
- Changes in age at last birth and its determinants in India.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Mechanisms of action of Zishen Yutai pills in treating premature ovarian failure determined by integrating UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS and network pharmacology analysis.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2022Article
- Of Elephants and Other Mammals: A Comparative Review of Reproductive Tumors and Potential Impact on Conservation.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Review
- An evolutionary perspective on kin care directed up the generations.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Article
- Examining the trade-offs between human fertility and longevity over three centuries using crowdsourced genealogy data.PloS one · 2021Article
- The evolutionary ecology of age at natural menopause: implications for public health.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
- Sexual frequency is associated with age of natural menopause: results from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- Can postfertile life stages evolve as an anticancer mechanism?PLoS biology · 2019Article
- Analyses of ovarian activity reveal repeated evolution of post-reproductive lifespans in toothed whales.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Drivers of advanced stage at breast cancer diagnosis in the multicountry African breast cancer - disparities in outcomes (ABC-DO) study.International journal of cancer · 2018Article
- Evolutionary demography of age at last birth: integrating approaches from human behavioural ecology and cultural evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Understanding variation in human fertility: what can we learn from evolutionary demography?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Review
- Lack of intergenerational reproductive conflict, rather than lack of inclusive fitness benefits, explains absence of post-reproductive lifespan in long-finned pilot whales.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Evolutionary biologists have long considered menopause to be a fundamental puzzle in understanding human fertility behaviour, as post-menopausal women are no longer physiologically capable of direct reproduction. Menopause typically occurs between 45 and 55 years of age, but across cultures and history, women often stop reproducing many years before menopause. Unlike age at first reproduction or even birth spacing, a woman nearing the end of her reproductive cycle is able to reflect upon the offspring she already has--their numbers and phenotypic qualities, including sexes. This paper reviews demographic data on age at last birth both across and within societies, and also presents a case study of age at last birth in rural Bangladeshi women. In this Bangladeshi sample, age at last birth preceded age at menopause by an average of 11 years, with marked variation around that mean, even during a period of high fertility. Moreover, age at last birth was not strongly related to age at menopause. Our literature review and case study provide evidence that stopping behaviour needs to be more closely examined as an important part of human reproductive strategies and life-history theory. Menopause may be a final marker of permanent reproductive cessation, but it is only one piece of the evolutionary puzzle.
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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.