Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society

Abstract Help is directed towards kin in many cooperative species, but its nature and intensity can vary by context. Humans are one of few species in which grandmothers invest in grandchildren, and this may have served as an important driver of our unusual life history. But helping behaviour is hard...

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Autores principales:	Simon N. Chapman, Mirkka Lahdenperä, Jenni E. Pettay, Robert F. Lynch, Virpi Lummaa
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/2f39e2180ebd4d71825c6e66ac572f2e
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:2f39e2180ebd4d71825c6e66ac572f2e2021-12-02T14:26:48ZOffspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society10.1038/s41598-021-83353-32045-2322https://doaj.org/article/2f39e2180ebd4d71825c6e66ac572f2e2021-02-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-83353-3https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract Help is directed towards kin in many cooperative species, but its nature and intensity can vary by context. Humans are one of few species in which grandmothers invest in grandchildren, and this may have served as an important driver of our unusual life history. But helping behaviour is hardly uniform, and insight into the importance of grandmothering in human evolution depends on understanding the contextual expression of helping benefits. Here, we use an eighteenth-nineteenth century pre-industrial genealogical dataset from Finland to investigate whether maternal or paternal grandmother presence (lineage relative to focal individuals) differentially affects two key fitness outcomes of descendants: fertility and survival. We found grandmother presence shortened spacing between births, particularly at younger mother ages and earlier birth orders. Maternal grandmother presence increased the likelihood of focal grandchild survival, regardless of whether grandmothers had grandchildren only through daughters, sons, or both. In contrast, paternal grandmother presence was not associated with descendants’ fertility or survival. We discuss these results in terms of current hypotheses for lineage differences in helping outcomes.Simon N. ChapmanMirkka LahdenperäJenni E. PettayRobert F. LynchVirpi LummaaNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-10 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Simon N. Chapman Mirkka Lahdenperä Jenni E. Pettay Robert F. Lynch Virpi Lummaa Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society
description	Abstract Help is directed towards kin in many cooperative species, but its nature and intensity can vary by context. Humans are one of few species in which grandmothers invest in grandchildren, and this may have served as an important driver of our unusual life history. But helping behaviour is hardly uniform, and insight into the importance of grandmothering in human evolution depends on understanding the contextual expression of helping benefits. Here, we use an eighteenth-nineteenth century pre-industrial genealogical dataset from Finland to investigate whether maternal or paternal grandmother presence (lineage relative to focal individuals) differentially affects two key fitness outcomes of descendants: fertility and survival. We found grandmother presence shortened spacing between births, particularly at younger mother ages and earlier birth orders. Maternal grandmother presence increased the likelihood of focal grandchild survival, regardless of whether grandmothers had grandchildren only through daughters, sons, or both. In contrast, paternal grandmother presence was not associated with descendants’ fertility or survival. We discuss these results in terms of current hypotheses for lineage differences in helping outcomes.
format	article
author	Simon N. Chapman Mirkka Lahdenperä Jenni E. Pettay Robert F. Lynch Virpi Lummaa
author_facet	Simon N. Chapman Mirkka Lahdenperä Jenni E. Pettay Robert F. Lynch Virpi Lummaa
author_sort	Simon N. Chapman
title	Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society
title_short	Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society
title_full	Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society
title_fullStr	Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society
title_full_unstemmed	Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society
title_sort	offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/2f39e2180ebd4d71825c6e66ac572f2e
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Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society

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