Life history as an integrative theoretical framework advancing the understanding of the attachment system

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-35
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Kruger
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Reproductive Strategies ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Behavioral Strategies ◽  
Life Conditions ◽  
Psychological System ◽  
Attachment Process

AbstractEvolutionary Life History Theory (LHT) is a powerful framework that can be used for understanding behavioral strategies as contingent adaptations to environmental conditions. Del Giudice uses LHT as a foundation for describing the attachment process as an evolved psychological system which evaluates life conditions and chooses reproductive strategies appropriate in the developmental environment, integrating findings across several literatures.

scholarly journals Evo–devo of child growth II: human life history and transition between its phases

2009 ◽  
Vol 160 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ze'ev Hochberg
Keyword(s):  
Body Composition ◽  
Life History ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Child Growth ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Adaptive Plasticity ◽  
Environmental Cues ◽  
Behavioral Strategies ◽  
The Times

This review attempts to use evolutionary life-history theory in understanding child growth in a broad evolutionary perspective. It uses the data and theory of evolutionary predictive adaptive strategies for transition from one life-history phase to the next, and the inherent adaptive plasticity in the timing of such transitions. Humans evolved to withstand energy crises by decreasing their body size, and evolutionary short-term adaptations to energy crises utilize a plasticity that modifies the timing of transition from infancy into childhood, culminating in short stature at the time of an energy crisis. Transition to juvenility is part of a strategy of conversion from a period of total dependence on the family and tribe for provision and security to self-supply, and a degree of adaptive plasticity is provided and determines body composition. Transition to adolescence entails plasticity in adapting to energy resources, other environmental cues, and the social needs of the maturing adolescent to determine lifespan and the period of fecundity and fertility.ConclusionLife-history transitions are the times when the child adaptively responds to environmental cues in order to enhance growth–body composition–lifespan–fecundity schedules and behavioral strategies that yield the highest fitness in a given environment.

scholarly journals Cuckoos, cowbirds and hosts: adaptations, trade-offs and constraints

2006 ◽  
Vol 362 (1486) ◽  
pp. 1873-1886 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Krüger
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Brood Parasitism ◽  
Reproductive Strategies ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Model Systems ◽  
Life History Strategies ◽  
Host System ◽  
Brood Parasites ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Evolution Of Life

The interactions between brood parasitic birds and their host species provide one of the best model systems for coevolution. Despite being intensively studied, the parasite–host system provides ample opportunities to test new predictions from both coevolutionary theory as well as life-history theory in general. I identify four main areas that might be especially fruitful: cuckoo female gentes as alternative reproductive strategies, non-random and nonlinear risks of brood parasitism for host individuals, host parental quality and targeted brood parasitism, and differences and similarities between predation risk and parasitism risk. Rather than being a rare and intriguing system to study coevolutionary processes, I believe that avian brood parasites and their hosts are much more important as extreme cases in the evolution of life-history strategies. They provide unique examples of trade-offs and situations where constraints are either completely removed or particularly severe.

Disorganized attachment and reproductive strategies

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Lewis ◽  
Gregory Tooley
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Life History ◽  
Middle Childhood ◽  
Parental Investment ◽  
Reproductive Strategies ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Disorganized Attachment ◽  
Attachment Patterns ◽  
Investment Theory ◽  
Parental Investment Theory

AbstractDel Giudice provides an extension of the life history theory of attachment that incorporates emerging data suggestive of sex differences in avoidant male and preoccupied female attachment patterns emerging in middle childhood. This commentary considers the place of disorganized attachment within this theory and why male children may be more prone to disorganized attachment by drawing on Trivers's parental investment theory.

scholarly journals Love Styles in the Context of Life History Theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-249
Author(s):  
Magdalena Marzec ◽  
Andrzej Łukasik
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Reproductive Strategies ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Mating Effort ◽  
Parental Effort ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
Love Styles ◽  
Number Of Children

Abstract The evolutionary function of love is to create a strong bond between the partners with reproduction in view. In order to achieve this goal, humans use various sexual/reproductive strategies, which have evolved due to specific reproductive benefits. The use of particular strategies depends on many factors but one of the most important is early childhood experiences, on which life history theory (LHT) focuses. John Lee (1973) identified 6 basic love styles: eros, ludus, storge, pragma, agape, and mania. Our goal was to check whether love styles may be treated as sexual/reproductive strategies in the context of LHT - slow or fast strategy. In our study (N = 177) we found that people who prefer the slow reproductive strategy are inclined to show passionate, pragmatic and friendly love, and those who prefer the fast strategy, treated love as a game. A low level of environmental stress in childhood results in preferring eros, storge and agape love styles, belonging to the slow strategy, and a high one results in preferring ludus, which belongs to the fast strategy. People representing eros, storge or pragma styles have restricted sociosexual orientation so they prefer long-term relationships, whereas those with the ludus style are people with unrestricted orientation, preferring short-term relationships. Besides, storge, agape and pragma seem to determine preferring qualities connected with parental effort in one’s partner, mania - with mating effort, and eros - with both kinds of effort. No correlation was found between the love style and the number of children.

scholarly journals Facultative sex and reproductive strategies in response to male availability in the spiny stick insect, Extatosoma tiaratum

2010 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Schneider ◽  
Mark A. Elgar
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Reproductive Strategies ◽  
Reproductive Output ◽  
Stick Insect ◽  
Model System ◽  
Life History Strategies ◽  
Evolutionary Significance ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Reproductive State

Facultative thelytoky, in which females can reproduce both sexually and asexually, offers a promising model system to understand the evolutionary significance of sex, by providing insights into whether the different reproductive modes reflect an adaptive life-history response to varying environmental conditions. Females of the spiny stick insect, Extatosoma tiaratum, can reproduce both sexually or asexually. We show that virgin females signal their reproductive state: males respond to signals produced by virgin females that have not commenced ovipositing, but fail to respond to ovipositing virgin females. Virgin females reared under different social environments varied their reproductive output: virgin females reared in the absence of males laid more eggs over a seven-day period than virgin females reared in the presence of males. The reproductive output of mated females over a seven-day period was higher than that of virgin females. These data suggest that female E. tiaratum adjust several life-history strategies in conjunction with facultative thelytoky.

Death, Hope, and Sex: Life-History Theory and the Development of Reproductive Strategies [and Comments and Reply]

1993 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
James S. Chisholm ◽  
Peter T. Ellison ◽  
Jeremy Evans ◽  
P. C. Lee ◽  
Leslie Sue Lieberman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Reproductive Strategies ◽  
Life History Theory

scholarly journals Childhood Environmental Harshness Predicts Coordinated Health and Reproductive Strategies: A Cross-sectional Study Of A Nationally Representative (France) Sample.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo Mell ◽  
Lou Safra ◽  
Yann Algan ◽  
Nicolas Baumard ◽  
Coralie Chevallier
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Reproductive Strategies ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Age At First Birth ◽  
Cross Sectional Survey ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
The Impact

There is considerable variation in health and reproductive behaviours within and across human populations. Drawing on principles from Life History Theory, psychosocial acceleration theory predicts that individuals developing in harsh environments decrease their level of somatic investment and accelerate their reproductive schedule. Although there is consistent empirical support for this general prediction, most studies have focused on a few isolated life history traits and few have investigated the way in which individuals apply life strategies across reproductive and somatic domains to produce coordinated behavioural responses to their environment. In our study, we thus investigate the impact of childhood environmental harshness on both reproductive strategies and somatic investment by applying structural equation modelling (SEM) to cross-sectional survey data obtained in a representative sample of the French population (n=1015, age: 19-87 years old, both genders). This data allowed us to demonstrate that (i) inter-individual variation in somatic investment (e.g. effort in looking after health) and reproductive timing (e.g. age at first birth) can be captured by a latent fast-slow continuum, and (ii) faster strategies along this continuum are predicted by higher childhood harshness. Overall, our results support the existence of a fast-slow continuum and highlight the relevance of the life history approach to understand variations in reproductive and health related behaviors.

Early-life conditions impact juvenile telomere length, but do not predict later life-history strategies or fitness in a wild vertebrate

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janske van de Crommenacker ◽  
Martijn Hammers ◽  
Hannah Louise Dugdale ◽  
Terry Burke ◽  
Jan Komdeur ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Telomere Length ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Effective Measure ◽  
Life Conditions ◽  
The Future ◽  
Early Life Conditions ◽  
The Impact

1.Environmental conditions experienced during early life may have long-lasting effects on later-life phenotypes and fitness. Individuals experiencing poor early-life conditions may suffer subsequent fitness constraints. Alternatively, individuals may use a strategic ‘Predictive Adaptive Response’ (PAR), whereby they respond – in terms of physiology or life-history strategy – to the conditions experienced in early life to maximise later-life fitness. In particular, the Future Lifespan Expectation (FLE) PAR hypothesis predicts that when poor early-life conditions negatively impact an individual’s physiological state, individuals will accelerate their reproductive schedule to maximise fitness during their shorter predicted lifespan.2.We aimed to measure the impact of early-life conditions and resulting fitness across individual lifetimes to test the predictions of the FLE hypothesis in a wild, long-lived model species. 3.Using a long-term individual-based dataset, we investigated how early-life conditions are linked with subsequent fitness in an isolated population of the Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis). How individuals experience early-life environmental conditions may vary greatly, so we also tested whether telomere length – shorter telomers are a biomarker of an individual’s exposure to stress – can provide an effective measure of the individual-specific impact of early-life conditions. Specifically, under the FLE hypothesis, we would expect shorter telomeres to be associated with accelerated reproduction. 4.Contrary to expectations, shorter juvenile telomere length was not associated with poor early-life conditions, but instead with better conditions, probably as a result of faster juvenile growth. Furthermore, neither juvenile telomere length, nor other measures of early-life conditions, were associated with age of first reproduction or the rate of early-life reproduction in either sex. These results do not support the key prediction of the Future Lifetime Expectation PAR hypothesis. 5.We found no support for the FLE hypothesis. However, at least for males, poor early-life body conditions were associated with lower first year survival and reduced longevity, indicating that poor early-life conditions pose subsequent fitness constraints. Our results also showed that using juvenile telomere length as a measure of early-life conditions requires caution, as it is likely to not only reflect environmental stress but also other processes such as growth.

scholarly journals Adolescent fertility and risky environments: a population-level perspective across the lifespan

2012 ◽  
Vol 279 (1744) ◽  
pp. 4003-4008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caitlyn D. Placek ◽  
Robert J. Quinlan
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Reproductive Strategies ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Early Risk ◽  
Human Reproductive ◽  
Adolescent Fertility ◽  
Extrinsic Risk ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Current Risk

Timing of first reproduction is a key life-history variable with important implications for global economic development and health. Life-history theory predicts that human reproductive strategies are shaped by mortality regimes. This study provides the first test of the relationship between population-level adolescent fertility (AF) and extrinsic risk at two time points. Data are from United Nations database and were analysed using mediation and moderation techniques. The goals were to determine whether (i) early risk has a stronger impact on fertility than current risk; (ii) current risk mediates the relationship between early risk and fertility outcomes; and (iii) different levels of early risk influence the relationship between current risk and fertility. Results indicated that current risk partially mediated the relationship between early risk and fertility, with early risk having the strongest impact on reproduction. Measures for early and current mortality did not show significant interaction effects. However, a series of separate regression analyses using a quantile split of early risk indicated that high levels of early risk strengthened the relationship between current risk and AF. Overall, these findings demonstrate that reproductive strategies are significantly influenced by fluctuations of early mortality as well as current environmental cues of harshness.

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