Aping our ancestors: Comparative aspects of reproductive ecology

There are many similarities among mammalian species in how ecological facto rs affect their reproductive potential and individual life histories. One o f the most important limiting factors is the availability of sufficient res ources to partition among essential growth, maintenance, and eventual repro duction.(1-3) How each mammal juggles these constraints constitutes its uni que life history and determines its success as a species. Yet, as Hill and Hurtado(4) recently argued, life-history analyses are rarely applied to hum an reproduction. In fact, despite the demonstrated significance of adequate nutrition for reproductive performance among most mammalian species that h ave been studied,(1,3,5) many demographers, and even some biological anthro pologists, have resisted the idea that humans, except under extreme famine conditions, might be subject to the same kinds of nutritional constraints t hat affect other mammals (6-9).