The evolution of menopause in toothed whales
dc.contributor.author | Ellis, S | |
dc.contributor.author | Franks, DW | |
dc.contributor.author | Nielsen, MLK | |
dc.contributor.author | Weiss, MN | |
dc.contributor.author | Croft, DP | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2024-03-18T13:27:41Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2024-03-13 | |
dc.date.updated | 2024-03-18T12:28:34Z | |
dc.description.abstract | Understanding how and why menopause has evolved is a long-standing challenge across disciplines. Females can typically maximize their reproductive success by reproducing for the whole of their adult life. In humans, however, women cease reproduction several decades before the end of their natural lifespan1,2. Although progress has been made in understanding the adaptive value of menopause in humans3,4, the generality of these findings remains unclear. Toothed whales are the only mammal taxon in which menopause has evolved several times5, providing a unique opportunity to test the theories of how and why menopause evolves in a comparative context. Here, we assemble and analyse a comparative database to test competing evolutionary hypotheses. We find that menopause evolved in toothed whales by females extending their lifespan without increasing their reproductive lifespan, as predicted by the 'live-long' hypotheses. We further show that menopause results in females increasing their opportunity for intergenerational help by increasing their lifespan overlap with their grandoffspring and offspring without increasing their reproductive overlap with their daughters. Our results provide an informative comparison for the evolution of human life history and demonstrate that the same pathway that led to menopause in humans can also explain the evolution of menopause in toothed whales. | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | Leverhulme Trust | en_GB |
dc.description.sponsorship | Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Published online 13 March 2024 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07159-9 | |
dc.identifier.grantnumber | NE S010327/1 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/135575 | |
dc.identifier | ORCID: 0000-0001-9019-6040 (Ellis, Samuel) | |
dc.identifier | ORCID: 0000-0001-6869-5097 (Croft, Darren P) | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | Nature Research | en_GB |
dc.relation.url | https://github.com/samellisq/marinelifehistdata | en_GB |
dc.relation.url | https://osf.io/26s7m/ | en_GB |
dc.relation.url | https://github.com/samellisq/marinesurvival | en_GB |
dc.relation.url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38480878 | en_GB |
dc.rights | © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | en_GB |
dc.title | The evolution of menopause in toothed whales | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2024-03-18T13:27:41Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 0028-0836 | |
exeter.place-of-publication | England | |
dc.description | This is the final version. Available on open access from Nature Research via the DOI in this record | en_GB |
dc.description | Data availability: All data used in this analysis are available as a database at: github.com/samellisq/marinelifehistdata | en_GB |
dc.description | Code availability: All R and stan code used for this analysis are available at osf.io/26s7m/. In addition, the mortality model is implemented as an R package available from: github.com/samellisq/marinesurvival | en_GB |
dc.identifier.eissn | 1476-4687 | |
dc.identifier.journal | Nature | en_GB |
dc.relation.ispartof | Nature | |
dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | en_GB |
dcterms.dateAccepted | 2024-02-05 | |
rioxxterms.version | VoR | en_GB |
rioxxterms.licenseref.startdate | 2024-03-13 | |
rioxxterms.type | Journal Article/Review | en_GB |
refterms.dateFCD | 2024-03-18T13:25:02Z | |
refterms.versionFCD | VoR | |
refterms.dateFOA | 2024-03-18T13:54:23Z | |
refterms.panel | A | en_GB |
refterms.dateFirstOnline | 2024-03-13 |
Files in this item
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/