Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112-0060, USA.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2010 Aug;1204:43-53. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2010.05527.x.
Two kinds of evidence suggest that female fertility may end at an earlier age in modern people than in ancestral populations or in our closest living relatives, chimpanzees. We investigate both to see whether fertility schedules or ovarian follicle counts falsify the alternative hypothesis that the age of terminal fertility changed little in the human lineage while greater longevity evolved due to grandmother effects. We use 19th century Utah women to represent non-contracepting humans, and compare their fertility by age with published records for wild chimpanzees. Then we revisit published counts of ovarian follicular stocks in both species. Results show wide individual variation in age at last birth and oocyte stocks in both humans and chimpanzees. This heterogeneity, combined with interspecific differences in adult mortality, has large and opposing effects on fertility schedules. Neither realized fertility nor rates of follicular atresia stand as evidence against the hypothesis that ages at last birth changed little while greater longevity evolved in our lineage.
有两种证据表明，现代人的生育能力可能比祖先或我们最近的亲属——黑猩猩更早结束。我们调查了这两种情况，以确定生育计划或卵巢卵泡计数是否会否定替代假设，即人类谱系中的终末生育年龄变化不大，而由于祖母效应导致寿命延长。我们使用 19 世纪犹他州的女性来代表未使用避孕药具的人类，并将她们的生育能力与野生黑猩猩的生育记录进行比较。然后，我们重新检查了这两个物种的卵巢卵泡存量的已发表计数。结果表明，在人类和黑猩猩中，最后一次生育的年龄和卵母细胞数量都存在很大的个体差异。这种异质性，加上成年死亡率的种间差异，对生育计划有很大的、相反的影响。无论是实际生育率还是卵泡闭锁率，都不能证明在我们的谱系中，随着寿命的延长，最后生育年龄变化不大的假设。
