Life history trade-offs and the partitioning of maternal investment: Implications for health of mothers and offspring

Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health
Jonathan C K Wells

Abstract

Lay Summary: This review sets out the hypothesis that life history trade-offs in the maternal generation favour the emergence of similar trade-offs in the offspring generation, mediated by the partitioning of maternal investment between pregnancy and lactation, and that these trade-offs help explain widely reported associations between growth trajectories and NCD risk. Growth patterns in early life predict the risk of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), but adaptive explanations remain controversial. It is widely assumed that NCDs occur either because of physiological adjustments to early constraints, or because early ecological cues fail to predict adult environmental conditions (mismatch). I present an inter-generational perspective on developmental plasticity, based on the over-arching hypothesis that a key axis of variability in maternal metabolism derives from life history trade-offs, which influence how individual mothers partition nutritional investment in their offspring between pregnancy and lactation. I review evidence for three resulting predictions: (i) Allocating relatively more energy to growth during development promotes the capacity to invest in offspring during pregnancy. Relevant mechanisms include greater fat-f...Continue Reading

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Citations

Sep 10, 2019·Evolutionary Anthropology·Amy LuNoah Snyder-Mackler
Aug 17, 2019·Frontiers in Public Health·Jonathan C K WellsAna Maria B Menezes
Jun 18, 2019·Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease·Jéssica FragosoCarol Gois Leandro
Apr 11, 2019·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Jonathan C K Wells
Aug 29, 2018·Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health·Alison A MacintoshJay T Stock
Sep 4, 2019·American Journal of Human Biology : the Official Journal of the Human Biology Council·Meredith W Reiches
Mar 27, 2021·American Journal of Physical Anthropology·Daniel P LongmanJonathan C K Wells
May 6, 2021·International Journal of Molecular Sciences·Purificación RosJulie A Chowen
Jul 20, 2021·International Journal of Epidemiology·Sikha SinhaHarshpal Singh Sachdev

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