Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Anthropology
Sex Differences In Age-Related Disease, Matthew R. Schwartz
Sex Differences In Age-Related Disease, Matthew R. Schwartz
Anthropology ETDs
Life history theory posits the evolution of sex-biased traits through asymmetries in the costs of reproduction. The research presented here evaluated the downstream effects of sex-biases in two age-related disease profiles: tooth loss, in which females exhibit a higher disease burden, and melanoma, in which females have a survival advantage.
Among the Tsimane, a natural fertility population of forager-horticulturalists with a high lifetime fertility and no access to oral healthcare, females lose more than males and around half a tooth per child. Parity accounts for 1.2\% of variation in tooth loss within females, but no variation in tooth loss in …