SynthesisProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017
Prenatal stress accelerates offspring growth to compensate for reduced maternal investment across mammals.
Synthesis in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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.
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Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 101 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Maternal glucocorticoids have persistent effects on offspring social phenotype irrespective of opportunity for social buffering.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- An mTORC2-Lipid Signaling Axis Controls Stress-Induced Organismal Death.Research square · 2026Article
- Fluctuating salinity during development impacts fish life histories.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Impact of prenatal drought exposures on under-5 childhood stunting in 32 low-and-middle-income countries: a global analysis using demographic and health survey.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2025Article
- Testing early life effects frameworks: developmental constraints and adaptive response hypotheses do not explain fertility outcomes in wild female baboons.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Early prenatal but not postnatal glucocorticoid exposure is associated with enhanced HPA axis activity into adulthood in a wild primate.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- How important is hidden phenotypic plasticity arising from alternative but converging developmental trajectories, and what limits it?The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Potential Benefits of a 'Trauma-Informed Care' Approach to Improve the Assessment and Management of Dogs Presented with Anxiety Disorders.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Review
- Early life drought predicts components of adult body size in wild female baboons.American journal of biological anthropology · 2023Article
- Article
- Conceptual and analytical approaches for modelling the developmental origins of inequality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Mechanisms of equality and inequality in mammalian societies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Metronidazole Potentiation by Panax Ginseng andAntibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- The long-term gut bacterial signature of a wild primate is associated with a timing effect of pre- and postnatal maternal glucocorticoid levels.Microbiome · 2023Article
- The Long-Term Consequences of Early Life Exposure to Tsunami and Conflict on Adolescents in Sri Lanka.Asia-Pacific journal of public health · 2023Article
- Growth in marine mammals: a review of growth patterns, composition and energy investment.Conservation physiology · 2023Article
- Low birthweight is associated with epigenetic age acceleration in the first 3 years of life.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2023Article
- Maternal prenatal cortisol trajectories predict accelerated growth in infancy.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2023Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Across mammals, prenatal maternal stress (PREMS) affects many aspects of offspring development, including offspring growth. However, how PREMS translates to offspring growth is inconsistent, even within species. To explain the full range of reported effects of prenatal adversity on offspring growth, we propose an integrative hypothesis: developmental constraints and a counteracting adaptive growth plasticity work in opposition to drive PREMS effects on growth. Mothers experiencing adversity reduce maternal investment leading to stunted growth (developmental constraints). Concomitantly, the pace of offspring life history is recalibrated to partly compensate for these developmental constraints (adaptive growth plasticity). Moreover, the relative importance of each process changes across ontogeny with increasing offspring independence. Thus, offspring exposed to PREMS may grow at the same rate as controls during gestation and lactation, but faster after weaning when direct maternal investment has ceased. We tested these predictions with a comparative analysis on the outcomes of 719 studies across 21 mammal species. First, the observed growth changes in response to PREMS varied across offspring developmental periods as predicted. We argue that the observed growth acceleration after weaning is not "catch-up growth," because offspring that were small for age grew slower. Second, only PREMS exposure early during gestation produced adaptive growth plasticity. Our results suggest that PREMS effects benefit the mother's future reproduction and at the same time accelerate offspring growth and possibly maturation and reproductive rate. In this sense, PREMS effects on offspring growth allow mother and offspring to make the best of a bad start.
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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.