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Reproductive success: Which meaning?
Author(s) -
Crognier E.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
american journal of human biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.559
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1520-6300
pISSN - 1042-0533
DOI - 10.1002/ajhb.10153
Subject(s) - reproductive success , meaning (existential) , inclusive fitness , inbreeding , selection (genetic algorithm) , kin selection , psychology , social psychology , sociology , evolutionary biology , biology , demography , computer science , population , artificial intelligence , psychotherapist
The theory of kin selection (the part played by behavior in the changes of mean inclusive fitness) induced many human sociobiologists to think that since behavior was involved in the increase in fitness, this last entity could apply to the individual. Approximated by the individual's lifetime reproductive success, this measure became the keyword of studies linking social and cultural behavior to biological adaptive processes. To be commonly applicable to human populations, it had to be simplified to represent the number of offspring reaching sexual maturity and most existing studies are based on this definition. The current trend, however, seems to consider that, like inbreeding, reproductive success takes its signification in the depth of successive generations. These diverse measures were tested in two traditional populations, Berber and Aymara, and show that finding a satisfactory evaluation of reproductive success is a problem that is still far from a solution. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 15:352–360, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.