April 18, 2003
Measuring Reproductive Success
Reproductive success: Which meaning?
E. Crognier
Abstract
The theory of kin selection (the part played by behavior in the changes of mean inclusive fitness) induced many human sociobiologists to think that since behavior was involved in the increase in fitness, this last entity could apply to the individual. Approximated by the individual's lifetime reproductive success, this measure became the keyword of studies linking social and cultural behavior to biological adaptive processes. To be commonly applicable to human populations, it had to be simplified to represent the number of offspring reaching sexual maturity and most existing studies are based on this definition. The current trend, however, seems to consider that, like inbreeding, reproductive success takes its signification in the depth of successive generations. These diverse measures were tested in two traditional populations, Berber and Aymara, and show that finding a satisfactory evaluation of reproductive success is a problem that is still far from a solution. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 15:352-360, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
How to measure reproductive success?
Beverly I. Strassmann et al.
Abstract
To date there have been few empirical comparisons between alternative methods for measuring reproductive success (RS). We consider the pros and cons of alternative measures of RS to provide guidance for the design of field studies in human behavioral ecology. We compare cross-sectional measures that count offspring alive at the time of the interview and retrospective measures that require data on offspring age at death or censoring. We consider analyses that include adult women (yielding age-specific estimates of RS) as well as analyses restricted to postreproductive women (yielding data on lifetime RS). These methods are applied to reproductive data for the Dogon of Mali, West Africa. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 15:361-369, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Posted by Dienekes at April 18, 2003 09:46 PM | PermaLink