Demographic and hormonal evidence for menopause in wild chimpanzees

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Wood, Brian M.; Negrey, Jacob D.; Brown, Janine L.; Deschner, Tobias; Thompson, Melissa Emery; Gunter, Sholly; Mitani, John C.; Watts, David P.; Langergraber, Kevin E.
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; Max Planck Society; University of Arizona; Smithsonian Institution; Smithsonian National Zoological Park & Conservation Biology Institute; Max Planck Society; University Osnabruck; University of New Mexico; Yale University; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; Arizona State University; Arizona State University-Tempe
• 刊物名称: SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0036-13282
• DOI: 10.1126/science.add5473
• 发表日期: 2023-10-27
• 关键词: kibale-national-park; follicle-stimulating-hormone; prospective-study aggregate; reproductive conflict; luteinizing-hormone; female chimpanzees; individual changes; mortality-rates; life-span; patterns

摘要

Among mammals, post-reproductive life spans are currently documented only in humans and a few species of toothed whales. Here we show that a post-reproductive life span exists among wild chimpanzees in the Ngogo community of Kibale National Park, Uganda. Post-reproductive representation was 0.195, indicating that a female who reached adulthood could expect to live about one-fifth of her adult life in a post-reproductive state, around half as long as human hunter-gatherers. Post-reproductive females exhibited hormonal signatures of menopause, including sharply increasing gonadotropins after age 50. We discuss whether post-reproductive life spans in wild chimpanzees occur only rarely, as a short-term response to favorable ecological conditions, or instead are an evolved species-typical trait as well as the implications of these alternatives for our understanding of the evolution of post-reproductive life spans.