Club EvMed: Die young, live fast: is accelerated reproduction an adaptive response to early life adversity in wild baboons?

Club EvMed is a web series of virtual evolutionary medicine conversations. These regularly-held meetings are styled around the idea of a journal club, with a different topic and discussion leader each time.

This week’s Club EvMed is “Die young, live fast: is accelerated reproduction an adaptive response to early life adversity in wild baboons?” Join us on Wednesday, April 21st at 12pm EDT/18:00 CEST for a conversation with Elizabeth Archie, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, and Chelsea Weibel, PhD Student at the University of Notre Dame. If an individual can anticipate an early death, should they also “live fast”? Fast reproduction is often proposed to be an adaptive response to harsh conditions in early life because early adversity predicts shorter lifespans. Individuals who speed up reproduction after experiencing early adversity might therefore have higher fitness than those who do not. Using long-term data on natural population of baboons in Amboseli, Kenya, we tested if fast reproduction offers lifetime fitness advantages to females. Contrary to several influential hypotheses, females who experienced early adversity did not improve their fitness if they sped up reproduction. Our results raise doubts that accelerated reproduction is an adaptive response to early adversity in long lived, slow-reproducing species. Sign up here for the meeting link: https://duke.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEqduqvrjgtHt1Na8KWCQ4ohy0K-m4Jb1d2.

For a full list of upcoming speakers, archived recordings of previous meetings, and to sign up for our email list so you never miss a meeting, visit the Club EvMed website at http://clubevmed.org.