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Publication Details
AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS
SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH
agricultural and biological sciences
Testosterone and paternal care in East African foragers and pastoralists
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Volume 276, No. 1655, Year 2009
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Description
The 'challenge hypothesis' posits that testosterone facilitates reproductive effort (investment in male-male competition and mate-seeking) at the expense of parenting effort (investment in offspring and mates). Multiple studies, primarily in North America, have shown that men in committed relationships, fathers, or both maintain lower levels of testosterone than unpaired men. Data from non-western populations, however, show inconsistent results. We hypothesized that much of this cross-cultural variation can be attributed to differential investment in mating versus parenting effort, even among married fathers. Here, we directly test this idea by comparing two neighbouring Tanzanian groups that exhibit divergent styles of paternal involvement: Hadza foragers and Datoga pastoralists. We predicted that high levels of paternal care by Hadza fathers would be associated with decreased testosterone in comparison with non-fathers, and that no such difference between fathers and non-fathers would be evident in Datoga men, who provide minimal direct paternal care. Twenty-seven Hadza men and 80 Datoga men between the ages of 17 and 60 provided morning and afternoon saliva samples from which testosterone was assayed. Measurements in both populations confirmed these predictions, adding further support to the hypothesis that paternal care is associated with decreased testosterone production in men. © 2008 The Royal Society.
Authors & Co-Authors
Muller, Martin N.
United States, Albuquerque
The University of new Mexico
United States, Cambridge
Harvard University
Marlowe, Frank W.
United States, Tallahassee
Florida State University
United States, Cambridge
Harvard University
Bugumba, Revocatus
Tanzania, Dar es Salaam
University of Dar es Salaam
Ellison, Peter T.
United States, Cambridge
Harvard University
Statistics
Citations: 172
Authors: 4
Affiliations: 4
Identifiers
Doi:
10.1098/rspb.2008.1028
ISSN:
09628452
Research Areas
Sexual And Reproductive Health
Participants Gender
Male