Parental investment and child health in a Yanomamo village suffering short-term food stress

The 1998 El Nino significantly reduced garden productivity in the Upper Ori noco region in Venezuela. Consequently, parents were forced to allocate foo d carefully to their children. Nutrition data collected from village childr en combined with genealogical data allowed the determination of which child ren suffered most, and whether the patterns of food distribution accorded w ith predictions from parental investment theory. For boys, three social var iables accounted for over 70% of the variance in subcutaneous fat after con trolling for age: number of siblings, age of the mother's youngest child, a nd whether the mother was the senior or junior co-wife, or was married mono gamously. These results accord well with parental investment theory. Parent s experiencing food stress faced a trade-off between quantity and quality, and between investing in younger versus older offspring. In addition, boys with access to more paternal investment (i.e. no stepmother) were better no urished. These variables did not account for any of the variance in female nutrition. Girls' nutrition was associated with the size of their patriline age and the number of non-relatives in the village, suggesting that lineage politics may have played a role. An apparent lack of relationship between orphan status and nutrition is also interesting, given that orphans suffere d high rates of skin flea infections. The large number of orphans being car ed for by only two grandparents suggests that grooming time may have been t he resource in short supply.