Comments on: Evolution’s Path May Lead To Shorter, Stouter Women Who Give Birth Earlier

By: Gwenny

Gwenny — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:42:13 +0000

I am 5′ 6″ . . .my daughter is over 6 feet tall. I had my first child at 23. She is 26 and has yet to show any interest in members of the opposite sex as anything other than patsies to buy her stuff online. Plus she told me when she was 14 that if the only way to avoid spawning was to be a lesbian, she would be a lesbian.

I can’t think of any one I know with a daughter who is not at least an inch taller . . and last I heard, humans are getting taller. Of course, if you have a daughter you results might vary.

By: Uncle Glenny

Uncle Glenny — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:39:16 +0000

was
http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/
part of the research?

By: Jason Thibeault

Jason Thibeault — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:03:17 +0000

Two generations, totalling two thousand women, all from the same town, might be convenient for developing an idea where the species would go if everyone else in the entire damn world got wiped out or that town got shot off into space, either way causing a speciation event. Otherwise, no. This is a study whose data doesn’t actually tell us anything about the future of humanity so much as examines what might happen if humanity speciated in a region with specific selection criteria.

By: havoc

havoc — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:05:46 +0000

Jason Dick:

More than 2000 women is not such a small dataset.

It’s not necessarily the number of women. I agree with catgirl’s concern over the participants being from one town. People from different regions will vary, nevertheless people from one fairly small city relative to people from different regions of the country/world. I think it’s a valid reason to be critical of the study.

By: Jason Thibeault

Jason Thibeault — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:03:23 +0000

Sexual dimorphism amongst miniscule male spiders and giant female ones, the latter eating the former if foreplay isn’t adequate for their tastes, comes to mind. Dimorphism can’t be that hard to select for, given the differences we can see in just about any animal species you could name.

By: becca

becca — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:47:36 +0000

For once, I’m not sure they should control for income. If tallness makes you richer, and being richer improves your odds of producing progeny, they might have missed that.

Also, I wonder how the fact that sexual selection favors tall males plays out. You had to find genes that make women short and men tall. Not impossible, certainly. But a more restricted set of evolutionary paths than just making everybody short, methinks.

By: Jason Dick

Jason Dick — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:30:09 +0000

More than 2000 women is not such a small dataset. Remember that they’re extrapolating future evolutionary trends from current reproductive success combined with the heritability of the traits in question. That’s a perfectly valid thing to do, and something that can indeed be done on short time scales.

However, it must be mentioned that short-term evolutionary trends often change in time. There’s also the problem that some of these traits may reduce future reproductive success (e.g. having menopause later may lead to less genetically-fit offspring). So it should be taken with a grain of salt, but I don’t think lack of sample size is a reasonable objection.

By: Jason Thibeault

Jason Thibeault — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:12:14 +0000

Gruebait shares my concern about this study. Seems like the dataset is way too small to make the extrapolations it does.

(Oh — bring a lantern. Grues hate light. Just a protip from an old hand.)

By: catgirl

catgirl — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:54:18 +0000

It’s an interesting study, but I think it’s premature to extrapolate the trends in one town to the entire world, or even the entire country.

By: Bill James

Bill James — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:31:09 +0000

Yeah… short squatters with flat heads on which a man can rest his drink. Gentlemen, it sounds like we’re going to be halfway there soon. In light of this good news, please allow me to propose a toast to the inherent efficiency of nature.