Mace Ruth, Jordan Fiona, Holden Clare
Department of Anthropology, University College London, Gower St, WC1E 6BT, London, UK.
Comp Biochem Physiol A Mol Integr Physiol. 2003 Sep;136(1):85-94. doi: 10.1016/s1095-6433(03)00019-9.
Physiological data from a range of human populations living in different environments can provide valuable information for testing evolutionary hypotheses about human adaptation. By taking into account the effects of population history, phylogenetic comparative methods can help us determine whether variation results from selection due to particular environmental variables. These selective forces could even be due to cultural traits-which means that gene-culture co-evolution may be occurring. In this paper, we outline two examples of the use of these approaches to test adaptive hypotheses that explain global variation in two physiological traits: the first is lactose digestion capacity in adults, and the second is population sex-ratio at birth. We show that lower than average sex ratio at birth is associated with high fertility, and argue that global variation in sex ratio at birth has evolved as a response to the high physiological costs of producing boys in high fertility populations.
来自生活在不同环境中的一系列人类群体的生理数据，可为检验有关人类适应性的进化假说提供有价值的信息。通过考虑群体历史的影响，系统发育比较方法可以帮助我们确定变异是否源于特定环境变量导致的选择。这些选择力甚至可能归因于文化特征——这意味着可能正在发生基因-文化共同进化。在本文中，我们概述了两个使用这些方法来检验适应性假说的例子，这些假说解释了两种生理特征的全球变异：第一个是成年人的乳糖消化能力，第二个是出生时的人口性别比。我们表明，出生时低于平均水平的性别比与高生育率相关，并认为出生时性别比的全球变异是作为对高生育率人群生育男孩的高生理成本的一种反应而进化出来的。
