Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Maternal and Child Health
Mechanistic and Phylogenetic Perspectives on Pregnancy Sickness
Published: 2025-04-15
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Endocrinology, Evolution, Maternal and Child Health
Evolutionary biologists have long been fascinated by the peculiar trait of pregnancy sickness, the syndrome experienced by two-thirds of pregnant individuals which includes nausea and vomiting of pregnancy and, in 2% of cases, progresses to a pathological extreme known as hyperemesis gravidarum. With the recent discovery of the placental hormone GDF15 as the main causal factor in pregnancy [...]
Explanations of the obstetric dilemma: evolutionary conflict exacerbates health problems in pregnancy and childbirth
Published: 2025-03-03
Subjects: Anthropology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Life Sciences, Maternal and Child Health, Medicine and Health Sciences, Translational Medical Research
In their recent Nature Ecology and Evolution paper, Webb and colleagues show that chimpanzee pelvises present a tight fit for newborn infants, just like in humans. Their detailed 3D characterization shows that the degree of the squeeze is comparable between humans and chimpanzees, and that both have sexually dimorphic pelvises. The authors challenge the so-called “obstetric dilemma” – the [...]
A Gene-Culture Co-Evolutionary Perspective on the Puzzle of Human Twinship
Published: 2024-05-20
Subjects: Biological and Physical Anthropology, Evolution, Maternal and Child Health, Population Biology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Natural selection should favor litter sizes that optimize trade-offs between brood-size and offspring viability. Across the primate order, modal litter size is one, suggesting a deep history of selection favoring minimal litters. Humans, however---despite having the longest juvenile period and slowest life-history of all primates---still produce twin-births at appreciable rates, even though such [...]
Deploying Ecological Countermeasures as a Biosecurity Imperative
Published: 2021-03-09
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Public Health, Epidemiology, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, Immunopathology, International Public Health, Life Sciences, Maternal and Child Health, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Population Biology, Public Health, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Microbiology and Immunobiology, Veterinary Pathology and Pathobiology, Zoology
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought biosecurity to the forefront of national security policy. Land use change is a fundamental driver of zoonotic disease outbreaks, yet substantial study is yet required to unravel the mechanisms by which land use-induced spillover operates. Ecological degradation may be the 21st Century’s most overlooked security threat. Within the biosecurity context, we introduce [...]