R. Sear
Height and reproductive success: how a Gambian population compares to the West
Sear, R.
Authors
Abstract
In Western societies, height is positively correlated with reproductive success (RS) for men but negatively correlated with RS for women. These relationships have been attributed to sexual selection: women prefer tall men, and men prefer short women. It is this success in the marriage market which leads to higher RS for tall men and short women. We have already shown that the relationship between height and RS for women is quite different in a non-Western context. In a subsistence farming community in rural Gambia, height is positively correlated with reproductive success for women, largely owing to the higher survival of the children of tall women. Here, the relationship between height and reproductive success is analyzed for men in the same community. For these Gambian men, there is no significant relationship between height and the number of children they produce, although tall men do contract more marriages than shorter men. We conclude that environmental context needs to be taken into account when analyzing human reproductive behavior.
Citation
Sear, R. (2006). Height and reproductive success: how a Gambian population compares to the West. Human Nature, 17(4), 405-418. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-006-1003-1
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Publication Date | Sep 1, 2006 |
Deposit Date | Oct 19, 2010 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 29, 2024 |
Journal | Human Nature |
Print ISSN | 1045-6767 |
Electronic ISSN | 1936-4776 |
Publisher | Springer |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 17 |
Issue | 4 |
Pages | 405-418 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-006-1003-1 |
Keywords | Height, Reproductive success, The Gambia. |
Files
Accepted Journal Article
(394 Kb)
PDF
Copyright Statement
The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com
You might also like
Evolutionary accounts of human behavioural diversity
(2011)
Journal Article
How much does family matter? Cooperative breeding and the demographic transition
(2011)
Journal Article
Parenting and families
(2011)
Book Chapter
Grandma plays favourites: X-chromosome relatedness and sex-specific childhood mortality
(2010)
Journal Article
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search