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Growth and Investment in Hominin Life History Evolution: Patterns, Processes, and Outcomes

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Abstract

The transitions from apes to lineages allied to humans are marked by shifts in the allocation of parental effort, associated with discontinuous changes in rates of infant and juvenile growth both prenatally and postnatally. Here, I assess growth and life history characteristics of apes within a general mammalian / primate paradigm, using time and energy expenditure as 2 fundamentals that covary with infant survival and success probabilities. I suggest that these survival probabilities depend on the quality, amount, and timing of parental care allocated to infants. Growth to birth, growth to weaning, and growth to reproductive onset are partitioned as separate periods within a life history on the basis of comparative mammalian data. Growth problems such as sexual dimorphism can be incorporated into an investment perspective by assessing when and how sex-specific parental care affects growth rates and the onset of reproduction. I compare features of the hominoid life history with developmental rates for hominin lineages as seen in dentition, and the fossil record of body and brain size changes over time. The links between parental effort and allocation of care to infant growth and survival generate speculative scenarios of sex-specific parental care allocation; I then explore hominin social evolution —mating system and childhood— for the lineages thought to lead to modern Homo, and for those that coexisted with ancestors of Homo.

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Acknowledgments

The errors and speculations are my own. I thank Pat Bateson, Louise Barrett, Robin Dunbar, Cecile Garcia, Robert Hinde, Louise Humphrey, Kristen Hawkes, Peter Kappeler, Steve Leigh, John Lycett, Ann MacLarnon, Bob Martin, Lyliane Rosetta, Caroline Ross, Jo Setchell, Carel van Schaik, and Bernard Wood for ideas, collaborations, and data. I thank all the other symposium participants who stimulated new directions as a result of their presentations, and Charlie Lockwood and Mike Plavcan for originally inviting me to present my scenarios. Louise Humphrey, Mike Plavcan, and 2 reviewers made many useful comments on the manuscript.

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  1. Behaviour and Evolution Research Group, Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, UK

    Phyllis C. Lee

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Lee, P.C. Growth and Investment in Hominin Life History Evolution: Patterns, Processes, and Outcomes. Int J Primatol 33, 1309–1331 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-011-9536-5

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