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21. The Challenges of Evolutionary Biodemography and the Example of Menopause

Chapter of: Human Evolutionary Demography(pp. 503–512)

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Title21. The Challenges of Evolutionary Biodemography and the Example of Menopause
ContributorShripad Tuljapurkar(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0251.21
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0251/chapters/10.11647/obp.0251.21
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
CopyrightShripad Tuljapurkar
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-06-14
Long abstractMenopause in humans and post reproductive life in humans and other species challenge our understanding in demographic and evolutionary terms. This chapter outlines the questions that are key to an evolutionary understanding of menopause, and the failure of some well-known theories of aging to deal with these questions. The chapter then introduces and explains the concept of “borrowed fitness” in which post-reproductive ages can indirectly acquire fitness from reproductive ages. Several mechanisms for this kind of “borrowing” are then discussed, including the grandmother effect, the contributions of older males, and most generally, an approach based on the transfers from and to different ages, both reproductive and post-reproductive. We also discuss other theoretical advances in the understanding of the evolution of old age mortality. We suggest that further development of the transfer approach is the most likely to lead to advances in our understanding of the evolution of menopause.
Page rangepp. 503–512
Print length10 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Shripad Tuljapurkar

(author)
Professor of Biology and the Morrison Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5549-4245
https://profiles.stanford.edu/shripad-tuljapurkar

Shripad Tuljapurkar is Professor of Biology and the Morrison Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University. His research areas include stochastic dynamics of human and natural populations; prehistoric societies; and probability forecasts including sex ratios, mortality, aging and fiscal balance. Tuljapurkar is a member of the Center for the Demography and Economics of Aging at the University of California, Berkeley. He has led a panel on aging for the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, served on the Technical Advisory Panel to the US Social Security Administration, and been president of the Evolutionary Demography Society. He received the 1996 Mindel Sheps Award from the Population Association of America, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998, and the Weldon Memorial Prize from Oxford University in 2017.

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