Helpful grandmothers in rural Ethiopia: A study of the effect of kin on child survival and growth
- Mhairi A. Gibson, R. Mace
- Economics
- 1 November 2005
Evolutionary ecology of human life history
- R. Mace
- BiologyAnimal Behaviour
- 31 January 2000
The evolution of menopause, the curtailing of female reproduction long before death, and parental investment in children in competition with each other may be key to understanding both of these unusual human phenomena.
Maternal grandmothers improve nutritional status and survival of children in rural Gambia
- R. Sear, R. Mace, I. McGregor
- PsychologyProceedings of the Royal Society of London…
- 22 August 2000
It is found that the only kin to improve the nutritional status of children significantly (apart from mothers) are maternal grandmothers, and that this is reflected in higher survival probabilities for children with living mothers and women, and in the presence of non–reproductive grandmothers.
The dawn chorus in the great tit Paras major is directly related to female fertility
- R. Mace
- BiologyNature
- 24 December 1987
It is shown here that changes in the duration of male dawn song are closely related to changes in female fertility.
Spread of cattle led to the loss of matrilineal descent in Africa: a coevolutionary analysis
The results support the hypothesis that acquiring cattle led formerly matrilineal Bantu–speaking cultures to change to patrillineal or mixed descent, and outline the daughter–biased parental investment hypothesis for matriliny, supported by data on sex, wealth and reproductive success from two African societies.
Biased parental investment and reproductive success in Gabbra pastoralists
- R. Mace
- EconomicsBehavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
- 1 February 1996
Results are interpreted as competition between same-sex siblings for parental investment, in the form of their father’s herd, which is more intense between sons than daughters as parental investments are greatest in males.
Matrilocal residence is ancestral in Austronesian societies
- Fiona M. Jordan, R. Gray, Simon J. Greenhill, R. Mace
- SociologyProceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological…
- 7 June 2009
Strong evidence is found that matrilocality was predominant in earlier Austronesian societies ca 5000–4500 BP, at the root of the language family and its early branches, and illuminating the divergent patterns of mtDNA and Y-chromosome markers seen in the Pacific.
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