The grandmother effect

The Grandmother Effect

Two classes of explanation have been advanced to explain women’s long post-menopausal life span – that it is an epiphenomenon of increased longevity or an evolved adaptation. While there is no decisive evidence to choose between them, the latter appears more likely. Two mechanisms for the evolved adaptation have been proposed, the ‘mother effect’ and the ‘grandmother effect’. It is argued that ...

BRCA1/2 mutations, fertility and the grandmother effect.

Grandmother elephants

As new technology makes it possible to perform experiments that were unimaginable a decade ago, Eve Marder argues that we can still learn from the past.

Pregnancy, Microchimerism, and the Maternal Grandmother

BACKGROUND A WOMAN OF REPRODUCTIVE AGE OFTEN HARBORS A SMALL NUMBER OF FOREIGN CELLS, REFERRED TO AS MICROCHIMERISM: a preexisting population of cells acquired during fetal life from her own mother, and newly acquired populations from her pregnancies. An intriguing question is whether the population of cells from her own mother can influence either maternal health during pregnancy and/or the ne...

The grandmother effect and the uniqueness of the human aging phenotype.

This issue of Gerontology includes a response by van Bodegom et al. to Herndon's recent article on the implications of the grandmother hypothesis for studies of aging and cognition. Although this hypothesis will doubtlessly continue to stimulate discussion, we focus here on our contention that human and non-human primate life histories have evolved essential differences and that these should be...