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No need for tiers to explain the ecological predictors of human life history strategies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2025

Christopher Kuzawa Open the ORCID record for Christopher Kuzawa [Opens in a new window] ,
Stacy Rosenbaum  and
Lee Gettler
Christopher Kuzawa*
Affiliation:
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA ckuzawa@fas.harvard.edu
Stacy Rosenbaum
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI, USA rosenbas@umich.edu
Lee Gettler
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA lgettler@nd.edu
*
*Corresponding author.
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Abstract

Ellis and colleagues propose that plasticity in human life history strategy (pubertal timing, reproductive pacing) is governed by energetic and mortality-cue related regulatory tiers. We feel that our published interpretation of these findings – that growth (and thus maturational timing) is energetically driven, while reproductive behaviors are largely free to vary independent of energetics – provides a more parsimonious interpretation of this work. The concept of tiers is mechanistically vague and introduces unnecessary complexity to this literature.

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Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 48 , 2025 , e112
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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