Outputs (5)

Who keeps children alive? A review of the effects of kin on child survival (2007)
Journal Article
Sear, R., & Mace, R. (2008). Who keeps children alive? A review of the effects of kin on child survival. Evolution and Human Behavior, 29(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2007.10.001

Children pose a problem. The extended period of childhood dependency and short interbirth intervals mean that human mothers have to care for several dependent children simultaneously. Most evolutionary anthropologists now agree that this is too much... Read More about Who keeps children alive? A review of the effects of kin on child survival.

Testing evolutionary theories of menopause (2007)
Journal Article
Shanley, D., Sear, R., Mace, R., & Kirkwood, T. (2007). Testing evolutionary theories of menopause. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 274(1628), 2943-2949. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2007.1028

Why do women cease fertility rather abruptly through menopause at an age well before generalized senescence renders child rearing biologically impossible? The two main evolutionary hypotheses are that menopause serves either (i) to protect mothers fr... Read More about Testing evolutionary theories of menopause.

Mind the gap(s)....in theory, method and data: Re-examining Kanazawa (2007)
Journal Article
Dickins, T., Sear, R., & Wells, A. (2007). Mind the gap(s)....in theory, method and data: Re-examining Kanazawa. British Journal of Health Psychology, 12(2), 167-178. https://doi.org/10.1348/135910707x174339

Kanazawa (2006) has put forward an evolutionarily grounded theory which claims that individuals in wealthier and more egalitarian societies live longer and stay healthier not because they are wealthier or more egalitarian but because they are more in... Read More about Mind the gap(s)....in theory, method and data: Re-examining Kanazawa.

The impact of reproduction on Gambian women: does controlling for phenotypic quality reveal costs of reproduction? (2007)
Journal Article
Sear, R. (2007). The impact of reproduction on Gambian women: does controlling for phenotypic quality reveal costs of reproduction?. American journal of physical anthropology, 132(4), 632-641. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.20558

Life history theory predicts that where resources are limited, investment in reproduction will cause a decline in body condition and ultimately may lower survival rates. We investigate the relationship between reproduction and mortality in women in r... Read More about The impact of reproduction on Gambian women: does controlling for phenotypic quality reveal costs of reproduction?.

Synthesis in the human evolutionary behavioural sciences (2007)
Journal Article
Sear, R., Lawson, D., & Dickins, T. (2007). Synthesis in the human evolutionary behavioural sciences. Journal of cultural and evolutionary psychology, 5(1-4), 3-28. https://doi.org/10.1556/jep.2007.1019

Over the last three decades, the application of evolutionary theory to the human sciences has shown remarkable growth. This growth has also been characterised by a ‘splitting’ process, with the emergence of distinct sub-disciplines, most notably: Hum... Read More about Synthesis in the human evolutionary behavioural sciences.