Menarcheal timing is accelerated by favorable nutrition but unrelated to developmental cues of mortality or familial instability in Cebu, Philippines

Kyweluk, Moira A.; Georgiev, Alexander V.; Borja, Judith B.; Gettler, Lee T.; Kuzawa, Christopher W.

doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.10.002

Cited by 44 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 49 publications

(64 reference statements)

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“…Our findings are consistent with existing anthropological and developmental theories positing that early exposure to adversity accelerates physical development, perhaps through environmental signaling of resource scarcity, and behavioral or physiological responses to stress (Belsky et al 2007; Kyweluk et al 2018; McEwen 2012). Future research should investigate how father-absent family environments may influence the biological antecedents to puberty.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Father Absence and Accelerated Reproductive Development in Non-Hispanic White Women in the United States

et al. 2018

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Girls who experience father absence in childhood also experience accelerated reproductive development in comparison with peers with present fathers. One hypothesis advanced to explain this empirical pattern is genetic confounding, wherein gene-environment correlation (rGE) causes a spurious relationship between father absence and reproductive timing. We test this hypothesis by constructing polygenic scores for age at menarche and first birth using recently available genome-wide association study results and molecular genetic data on a sample of non-Hispanic white females from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We find that young women's accelerated menarche polygenic scores are unrelated to their exposure to father absence. In contrast, polygenic scores for earlier age at first birth tend to be higher in young women raised in homes with absent fathers. Nevertheless, father absence and the polygenic scores independently and additively predict reproductive timing. We find no evidence in support of the rGE hypothesis for accelerated menarche and only limited evidence in support of the rGE hypothesis for earlier age at first birth.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Father Absence and Accelerated Reproductive Development in Non-Hispanic White Women in the United States

et al. 2018

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“…Evolutionary and life history theoretical approaches to developmental plasticity assume that organisms have an ability to adaptively calibrate their behavior and allocation priorities to their early ecological niche [2,8,13,18,36,61], and in particular to environmental cues that correlate with extrinsic mortality, which predicts life history pace across species [45]. Broadly, there is support for the notion that certain stressful psychosocial conditions during early life can lead to earlier human maturation (only when paired with energy abundance) and accelerated reproductive scheduling [2,7,11,25,36,38,46,53,54].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the links between early life and young adulthood social experiences and men's later life psychobiology as fathers

Sarma

Kuo

Bechayda

et al. 2018

Physiology & Behavior

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Early life cues of environmental harshness and unpredictability have been hypothesized to influence within-species variation in the timing of life history transitions and the dynamics of reproductive strategies, such as investments in mating and parenting. It is also believed that adolesence is an influential developmental period for male reproductive strategies, with those who achieve greater social and sexual success during that period maintaining faster life history strategies into adulthood. If correct, such early life and post-pubertal experiences could also help shape the psychobiological pathways that mediate reproductive strategies, including the well documented physiological shifts that occur when some men become parents. Drawing on a large sample of Filipino men (n=417), we evaluate whether men who experienced cues of harshness or unpredictability in childhood or have earlier ages at sexual debut have elevated testosterone (T) as fathers. We also test whether males who experienced a combination of early life experiences of harshness or unpredictability and had earlier ages of sexual debut during adolescence had the most elevated T as fathers. We found that fathers who experienced early life harshness and who engaged in sex at an earlier age had elevated waking T. Among men transitioning to fatherhood across the 4.5-year follow-up period of this study, those who experienced unpredictability and who engaged in sex at an earlier age showed attenuated declines in waking T between baseline and follow-up. Complementing these findings, we found that fathers who first engaged in sex at later ages had greater acute declines in T when they played with their toddlers. We suggest that these patterns could reflect programming effects of sociosexual experiences during the years following the marked biological transitions that accompany puberty, which occur along with the better-studied effects of earlier life exposures to stressors. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that early life circumstances and social and sexual experiences, from early life to young adulthood, help calibrate physiological axes as key mechanisms coordinating dynamic life history strategies.

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“…The knee height association with offspring TL shows some consistency with this adaptive signaling hypothesis. Earlier puberty tends to occur with better nourishment and decreased infections (Bribiescas, , p. 111; Kyweluk, Georgiev, Borja, Gettler, & Kuzawa, ; Gettler, McDade, Bragg, Feranil, & Kuzawa, ; Goldstein, ). Assuming earlier puberty is likely to predict similar better‐quality environments in descendant generations (e.g., better nutritional availability and lower infection risk), the trade‐offs involved in investing energetic resources in somatic maintenance may be lessened.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing for paternal influences on offspring telomere length in a human cohort in the Philippines

Eisenberg

Rej

Duazo

et al. 2019

American J Phys Anthropol

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Objectives: Telomeres, emerging biomarkers of aging, are comprised of DNA repeats located at chromosomal ends that shorten with cellular replication and age in most human tissues. In contrast, spermatocyte telomeres lengthen with age. These changes in telomere length (TL) appear to be heritable, as older paternal ages of conception (PAC) predict longer offspring TL. Mouse-model studies raise questions about the potential for effects of paternal experiences on human offspring TL, as they suggest that smoking, inflammation, DNA damage, and stressors all shorten sperm TL. Here, we examined whether factors from the paternal environment predict offspring TL as well as interact with PAC to predict offspring TL.Materials and Methods: Using data from the Philippines, we tested if smoking, psychosocial stressors, or shorter knee height (a measure of early life adversity) predict shorter offspring TL. We also tested if these interacted with PAC in predicting offspring TL.Results: While we did not find the predicted associations, we observed a trend toward fathers with shorter knee height having offspring with longer TL. In addition, we found that knee height interacted with PAC to predict offspring TL. Specifically, fathers with shorter knee heights showed a stronger positive effect of PAC on offspring TL.Discussion: While the reasons for these associations remain uncertain, shorter knee height is characteristic of earlier puberty. Since spermatocyte TL increases with the production of sperm, we speculate that individuals with earlier puberty, and its concomitant commencement of production of sperm, had more time to accumulate longer sperm telomeres. K E Y W O R D Sepigenetics, intergenerational effects, intergenerational inertia, intergenerational plasticity, senescence

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Menarcheal timing is accelerated by favorable nutrition but unrelated to developmental cues of mortality or familial instability in Cebu, Philippines

Abstract: Menarcheal timing is accelerated by favorable nutrition but unrelated to developmental cues of mortality or familial instability in Cebu, Philippines Kyweluk, Moira A.; Georgiev, Alexander V.; Borja, Judith B. ; Gettler, Lee T. ; Kuzawa, Christopher W.

Cited by 44 publications

References 49 publications

Father Absence and Accelerated Reproductive Development in Non-Hispanic White Women in the United States

Father Absence and Accelerated Reproductive Development in Non-Hispanic White Women in the United States

Exploring the links between early life and young adulthood social experiences and men's later life psychobiology as fathers

Testing for paternal influences on offspring telomere length in a human cohort in the Philippines

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