Marrying women 15 years younger maximized men's evolutionary fitness in historical Sami
Most men marry younger women. This has been attributed to men selecting young women due to their high reproductive value and women preferring older men due to their wealth and high social status. Such mate preferences have been suggested to be adaptive, but despite a flourishing number of studies on...
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crroyalsociety:10.1098/rsbl.2007.0538 2024-06-02T08:14:03+00:00 Marrying women 15 years younger maximized men's evolutionary fitness in historical Sami Helle, Samuli Lummaa, Virpi Jokela, Jukka 2007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2007.0538 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbl.2007.0538 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full-xml/10.1098/rsbl.2007.0538 en eng The Royal Society https://royalsociety.org/journals/ethics-policies/data-sharing-mining/ Biology Letters volume 4, issue 1, page 75-78 ISSN 1744-9561 1744-957X journal-article 2007 crroyalsociety https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2007.0538 2024-05-07T14:16:20Z Most men marry younger women. This has been attributed to men selecting young women due to their high reproductive value and women preferring older men due to their wealth and high social status. Such mate preferences have been suggested to be adaptive, but despite a flourishing number of studies on the mate selection patterns themselves, little is still known of their actual fitness consequences. We examined how the age difference between spouses who married only once affected their lifetime reproductive success in historical monogamous Sami populations. We found that men maximized their fitness by marrying women approximately 15 years younger and vice versa. However, most couples failed to marry optimally. Only 10% of marriages fell within the optimal parental age difference, suggesting that cultural and ecological constraints for maximizing fitness were considerable. Those who succeeded in marrying optimally were the most preferred partners: young women and old men. Our findings indicate that, in Sami, parental age difference was under natural and sexual selection, as suggested by evolutionary theory. Article in Journal/Newspaper sami sami The Royal Society Biology Letters 4 1 75 78 |
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The Royal Society |
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crroyalsociety |
language |
English |
description |
Most men marry younger women. This has been attributed to men selecting young women due to their high reproductive value and women preferring older men due to their wealth and high social status. Such mate preferences have been suggested to be adaptive, but despite a flourishing number of studies on the mate selection patterns themselves, little is still known of their actual fitness consequences. We examined how the age difference between spouses who married only once affected their lifetime reproductive success in historical monogamous Sami populations. We found that men maximized their fitness by marrying women approximately 15 years younger and vice versa. However, most couples failed to marry optimally. Only 10% of marriages fell within the optimal parental age difference, suggesting that cultural and ecological constraints for maximizing fitness were considerable. Those who succeeded in marrying optimally were the most preferred partners: young women and old men. Our findings indicate that, in Sami, parental age difference was under natural and sexual selection, as suggested by evolutionary theory. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Helle, Samuli Lummaa, Virpi Jokela, Jukka |
spellingShingle |
Helle, Samuli Lummaa, Virpi Jokela, Jukka Marrying women 15 years younger maximized men's evolutionary fitness in historical Sami |
author_facet |
Helle, Samuli Lummaa, Virpi Jokela, Jukka |
author_sort |
Helle, Samuli |
title |
Marrying women 15 years younger maximized men's evolutionary fitness in historical Sami |
title_short |
Marrying women 15 years younger maximized men's evolutionary fitness in historical Sami |
title_full |
Marrying women 15 years younger maximized men's evolutionary fitness in historical Sami |
title_fullStr |
Marrying women 15 years younger maximized men's evolutionary fitness in historical Sami |
title_full_unstemmed |
Marrying women 15 years younger maximized men's evolutionary fitness in historical Sami |
title_sort |
marrying women 15 years younger maximized men's evolutionary fitness in historical sami |
publisher |
The Royal Society |
publishDate |
2007 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2007.0538 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbl.2007.0538 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full-xml/10.1098/rsbl.2007.0538 |
genre |
sami sami |
genre_facet |
sami sami |
op_source |
Biology Letters volume 4, issue 1, page 75-78 ISSN 1744-9561 1744-957X |
op_rights |
https://royalsociety.org/journals/ethics-policies/data-sharing-mining/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2007.0538 |
container_title |
Biology Letters |
container_volume |
4 |
container_issue |
1 |
container_start_page |
75 |
op_container_end_page |
78 |
_version_ |
1800737741450772480 |