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Brand new paper out by Euan Young et al: The long-lasting legacy of reproduction: lifetime reproductive success shapes expected genetic contributions of humans after 10 generations

Kuvaaja Liina Cantell 1910. Museovirasto

Euan Young, Ellie Chesterton, Virpi Lummaa, Erik Postma and Hannah L. Dugdale published a paper in Proc R Sob B: The long-lasting legacy of reproduction: lifetime reproductive success shapes expected genetic contributions of humans after 10 generations

Abstract

An individual's lifetime reproductive success (LRS) measures its realized genetic contributions to the next generation, but how well does it predict this over longer periods? Here we use human genealogical data to estimate expected individual genetic contributions (IGC) and quantify the degree to which LRS, relative to other fitness proxies, predicts IGC over longer periods. This allows an identification of the life-history stages that are most important in shaping variation in IGC. We use historical genealogical data from two non-isolated local populations in Switzerland to estimate the stabilized IGC for 2230 individuals approximately 10 generations after they were born. We find that LRS explains 30% less variation in IGC than the best predictor of IGC, the number of grandoffspring. However, albeit less precise than the number of grandoffspring, we show that LRS does provide an unbiased prediction of IGC. Furthermore, it predicts IGC better than lifespan, and accounting for offspring survival to adulthood does not improve the explanatory power. Overall, our findings demonstrate the value of human genealogical data to evolutionary biology and suggest that reproduction—more than lifespan or offspring survival—impacts the long-term genetic contributions of historic humans, even in a population with appreciable migration.

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Laisk T, Tšuiko O, Jatsenko T, Hõrak P, Otala M, Lahdenperä M, Lummaa V, Tuuri T, Salumets A, Tapanainen JS:

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New paper accepted for publication in Nature Reviews Genetics

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New Papers: Demography of grandparenthood and testing the X-linked grandmother hypothesis

Two papers out now from Simon's PhD project!

1) Changes in the Length of Grandparenthood in Finland 1790-1959, published in the Finnish Yearbook of Population Reasarch. In this paper, the team investigated how the shared time between grandparents and grandchildren changed across the demographic transition and with industrialisation. This shared time was low and stable before these major events, and began to increase rapidly after they began.

2) Limited support for the X-linked grandmother hypothesis in pre-industrial Finland, published in Biology Letters. Here, we tested whether slight differences in relatedness via the X-chromosome might lead to differences the survival of male and female grandchildren with maternal or paternal grandmothers. Though two of three predictions were supported, we concluded that the X-linked grandmother hypothesis cannot account for lineage differences by itself. 

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Prof. Virpi Lummaa

Academy Professor
virpi.lummaa (at) utu.fi

Dr. Anne Hemmi

Research Coordinator
hemmi (at) utu.fi

University of Turku
Department of Biology
Natura
Vesilinnantie 5
20014 University of Turku
Finland

Academy of Finland
University of Turku