Letter

You have free access to this content

Severe intergenerational reproductive conflict and the evolution of menopause

  1. Mirkka Lahdenperä1,†,*,
  2. Duncan O. S. Gillespie2,†,
  3. Virpi Lummaa3,4,
  4. Andrew F. Russell5,6

Article first published online: 22 AUG 2012

DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01851.x

Issue

Ecology Letters

Ecology Letters

Volume 15, Issue 11, pages 1283–1290, November 2012

Additional Information

How to Cite

Ecology Letters (2012) 15: 1283–1290

Author Information

  1. 1

    Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

  2. 2

    Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

  3. 3

    Department of Animal & Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

  4. 4

    Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, Germany

  5. 5

    Centre for Ecology & Conservation, College of Life & Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn, UK

  6. 6

    Station d'Ecologie Expérimentale du CNRS USR 2936, Moulis, France

  1. †

    These authors contributed equally to this work.

* Correspondence:
E-mail : mirkka.lahdenpera@utu.fi

  1. †

    These authors contributed equally to this work.

Publication History

  1. Issue published online: 1 OCT 2012
  2. Article first published online: 22 AUG 2012
  3. Manuscript Accepted: 19 JUL 2012
  4. Manuscript Revised: 17 JUL 2012
  5. Manuscript Revised: 10 MAY 2012
  6. Manuscript Received: 10 APR 2012

SEARCH

SEARCH BY CITATION

ARTICLE TOOLS

View Full Article with Supporting Information (HTML) Get PDF (269K)

Keywords:

  • Cooperation;
  • ecological constraints;
  • grandmother hypothesis;
  • inclusive fitness;
  • kin selection;
  • mother hypothesis;
  • reproductive conflict hypothesis;
  • reproductive skew;
  • restraint;
  • suppression

Abstract

Human menopause is ubiquitous among women and is uninfluenced by modernity. In addition, it remains an evolutionary puzzle: studies have largely failed to account for diminishing selection on reproduction beyond 50 years. Using a 200-year dataset on pre-industrial Finns, we show that an important component is between-generation reproductive conflict among unrelated women. Simultaneous reproduction by successive generations of in-laws was associated with declines in offspring survivorship of up to 66%. An inclusive fitness model revealed that incorporation of the fitness consequences of simultaneous intergenerational reproduction between in-laws, with those of grandmothering and risks of dying in childbirth, were sufficient to generate selection against continued reproduction beyond 51 years. Decomposition of model estimates suggested that the former two were most influential in generating selection against continued reproduction. We propose that menopause evolved, in part, because of age-specific increases in opportunities for intergenerational cooperation and reproductive competition under ecological scarcity.

View Full Article with Supporting Information (HTML) Get PDF (269K)