ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2019
The evolution of life-history theory: a bibliometric analysis of an interdisciplinary research area.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Methodological and Historical Evolution of Indexed Publications in Occupational Therapy.The British journal of occupational therapy · 2026Review
- Concern About COVID-19 Mediates the Relationship Between Life-History Strategy and Stockpiling Food.International journal of psychology : Journal international de psychologie · 2025Article
- Article
- Life-history strategy, adverse environment, and justification of life-ending decisions.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Global Research Trends in Childhood Asthma and the Microbiome: A Bibliometric Analysis of 2000 to 2024.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2025Article
- Mortality risk predicts global, local, and individual patterns of human reproduction.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Maternal risk-management elucidates the evolution of reproductive adaptations in sharks by means of natural selection.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Reproductive Strategies and Romantic Love in Early Modern Europe.Archives of sexual behavior · 2024Article
- How pubertal timing and self-regulation predict adolescent sexual activity in resource-poor environments.Development and psychopathology · 2023Article
- The shelterin protein expansion of telomere dynamics: Linking early life adversity, life history, and the hallmarks of aging.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Life stories: Unraveling the academic configuration of a multifaceted and multidisciplinary field of knowledge.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Scientometric Analysis of Global Scientific Literature on Aging in Place.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Innovations are disproportionately likely in the periphery of a scientific network.Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften · 2021Article
- Mapping the Worldwide Trends on Energy Poverty Research: A Bibliometric Analysis (1999-2019).International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Extrinsic and Existential Mortality Risk in Reproductive Decision-Making: Examining the Effects of COVID-19 Experience and Climate Change Beliefs.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- On the Incongruence between Psychometric and Psychosocial-Biodemographic Measures of Life History.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2020Article
- Life-history theory in psychology and evolutionary biology: one research programme or two?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- The importance of life history and population regulation for the evolution of social learning.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The term 'life-history theory' is a familiar label in several disciplines. Life-history theory has its roots in evolutionary models of the fitness consequences of allocating energy to reproduction, growth and self-maintenance across the life course. Increasingly, the term is also used in the conceptual framing of psychological and social-science studies. As a scientific paradigm expands its range, its parts can become conceptually isolated from one another, even to the point that it is no longer held together by a common core of shared ideas. Here, we investigate the literature invoking the term 'life-history theory' using quantitative bibliometric methods based on patterns of shared citation. Results show that the literature up to and including 2010 was relatively coherent: it drew on a shared body of core references and had only weak cluster divisions running along taxonomic lines. The post-2010 literature is more fragmented: it has more marked cluster boundaries, both between the human and non-human literatures, and within the human literature. In particular, two clusters of human research based on the idea of a fast-slow continuum of individual differences are bibliometrically isolated from the rest. We also find some evidence suggesting a decline over time in the incidence of formal modelling. We point out that the human fast-slow continuum literature is conceptually closer to the non-human 'pace-of-life' literature than it is to the formal life-history framework in ecology and evolution.
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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.