University of Turku, Turku, Finland.
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Nat Commun. 2020 May 12;11(1):2377. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-15703-0.
Understanding how conditions experienced during development affect reproductive timing is of considerable cross-disciplinary interest. Life-history theory predicts that organisms will accelerate reproduction when future survival is unsure. In humans, this can be triggered by early exposure to mortality. Previous studies, however, have been inconclusive due to several confounds that are also likely to affect reproduction. Here we take advantage of a natural experiment in which a population is temporarily divided by war to analyze how exposure to mortality affects reproduction. Using records of Finnish women in World War II, we find that young girls serving in a paramilitary organization wait less time to reproduce, have shorter inter-birth intervals, and have more children than their non-serving peers or sisters. These results support the hypothesis that exposure to elevated mortality rates during development can result in accelerated reproductive schedules and adds to our understanding of how participation in warfare affects women.
了解发育过程中经历的条件如何影响生殖时机，这在跨学科领域具有相当大的兴趣。生活史理论预测，当未来的生存不确定时，生物体将加速繁殖。在人类中，这可能会因早期暴露于死亡率而触发。然而，由于几个也可能影响生殖的混杂因素，以前的研究尚无定论。在这里，我们利用一场战争暂时将一个人群分割的自然实验，来分析暴露于死亡率如何影响生殖。利用二战期间芬兰女性的记录，我们发现，在准军事组织中服役的年轻女孩等待生育的时间更短，生育间隔更短，生育的孩子也比没有服役的同龄人或姐妹多。这些结果支持了这样一种假设，即发育过程中暴露于升高的死亡率可能导致生殖计划的加速，并增加了我们对战争参与如何影响女性的理解。
