Virpi Lummaa
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View article: Mothers facing greater environmental adversity experience increased costs of reproduction
Mothers facing greater environmental adversity experience increased costs of reproduction Open
Evolutionary theory of aging predicts that women with increased reproductive effort live shorter lives, but evidence is inconsistent. These inconsistencies could be because environmental conditions influence how much a mother’s life span i…
View article: Age- and sex-dependent associations between the number of older siblings and early-life survival in pre-industrial humans
Age- and sex-dependent associations between the number of older siblings and early-life survival in pre-industrial humans Open
Siblings are an important part of an individual’s early-life environment and may therefore play an important role in shaping an individual’s survival. The quantification of sibling effects on survival is challenging, however, especially in…
View article: Tusks, testosterone and personality in male Asian elephants ( <i>Elephas maximus</i> )
Tusks, testosterone and personality in male Asian elephants ( <i>Elephas maximus</i> ) Open
Male Asian elephants exhibit phenotypic diversity in tusk development, with long, short and tuskless bulls varying in frequency among different populations. Although the factors that maintain tusk variation in Asian elephants remain unclea…
View article: Age- and sex-dependent sibling effects on early-life survival in preindustrial humans
Age- and sex-dependent sibling effects on early-life survival in preindustrial humans Open
Siblings are an important part of an individual’s early-life environment and may therefore play an important role in shaping an individual’s fitness. The quantification of sibling effects is challenging, especially in long-lived species wi…
View article: The spatial distribution of pertussis, but not measles or smallpox, in pre-industrial Finland matches dialects
The spatial distribution of pertussis, but not measles or smallpox, in pre-industrial Finland matches dialects Open
View article: Reproductive inequality in humans and other mammals
Reproductive inequality in humans and other mammals Open
To address claims of human exceptionalism, we determine where humans fit within the greater mammalian distribution of reproductive inequality. We show that humans exhibit lower reproductive skew (i.e., inequality in the number of surviving…
View article: Extracting Social Connections from Finnish Karelian Refugee Interviews Using LLMs
Extracting Social Connections from Finnish Karelian Refugee Interviews Using LLMs Open
We performed a zero-shot information extraction study on a historical collection of 89,339 brief Finnish-language interviews of refugee families relocated post-WWII from Finnish Eastern Karelia. Our research objective is two-fold. First, w…
View article: Socioeconomic Differences in Vaccination Coverage After a Mandatory Vaccination Law, 1855-1900
Socioeconomic Differences in Vaccination Coverage After a Mandatory Vaccination Law, 1855-1900 Open
Importance Mandatory vaccination is a major tool to combat increasing vaccine hesitancy. In principle, a vaccination law, ie, a mandatory vaccination law without exemptions, applies equally to everyone, but its effects across different soc…
View article: Close and more distant relatives are associated with child mortality risk in historical Finland
Close and more distant relatives are associated with child mortality risk in historical Finland Open
Humans are characterised as cooperative breeders, as not only the parents but also other members of the social group take part in raising offspring. The individuals who invest most in childrearing are usually the more closely related indiv…
View article: Mothers facing greater environmental adversity experience increased costs of reproduction
Mothers facing greater environmental adversity experience increased costs of reproduction Open
Evolutionary theory of aging predicts that women with increased reproductive effort live shorter lives, but evidence is inconsistent. These inconsistencies could be because environmental conditions influence how much a mother's life span i…
View article: No evidence of early life resource pulse effects on age‐specific variation in survival, reproduction and body mass of female Siberian flying squirrels
No evidence of early life resource pulse effects on age‐specific variation in survival, reproduction and body mass of female Siberian flying squirrels Open
Understanding the diversity and causes of senescence patterns in the wild remains a challenging task, in particular among fast‐living species for which senescence patterns have been poorly studied. Early life environmental conditions can s…
View article: Milk metabolite composition of a semi-captive population of Asian elephants
Milk metabolite composition of a semi-captive population of Asian elephants Open
Lack of maternal milk commonly leads to Asian elephant calves’ death in captivity. Currently, available supplements seem inefficient. Hence, we aimed at characterizing the composition of Asian elephant milk to provide information on calves…
View article: Reply to: Maternal capacity, twinning and fertility: the last birth matters
Reply to: Maternal capacity, twinning and fertility: the last birth matters Open
View article: Fertility resilience varies by socioeconomic status and sex: Historical trends in childlessness across 150 years
Fertility resilience varies by socioeconomic status and sex: Historical trends in childlessness across 150 years Open
View article: Asian elephant calf physiology and mahout perspectives during taming in Myanmar
Asian elephant calf physiology and mahout perspectives during taming in Myanmar Open
A quarter of Asian elephants are captive, with greater than 90% of these tamed and cared for by handlers (mahouts) in Asia. Although taming is a much-discussed welfare issue, no studies to our knowledge have empirically assessed its impact…
View article: Menopause has not evolved as a general trait in mammals: A response to ‘Do mammals have menopause?’
Menopause has not evolved as a general trait in mammals: A response to ‘Do mammals have menopause?’ Open
Reproductive senescence is widespread across mammals, but only a small number of species have physiological reproductive cessation and an extended post-reproductive lifespan. A recent commentary in Cell by Winkler & Goncalves (2023) sugges…
View article: Grandmother Effects Over the Finnish Demographic Transition
Grandmother Effects Over the Finnish Demographic Transition Open
Demographic transitions are defining events for human societies, marking shifts from natural mortality and fertility rates to the low rates seen in industrialised populations. These transitions can affect trait evolution through altering t…
View article: Testosterone variation in a semi-captive population of Asian elephants in Myanmar
Testosterone variation in a semi-captive population of Asian elephants in Myanmar Open
Hormones are known to be involved in life-history trade-offs as systemic signals that establish functional links among traits and regulate key behavioural and physiological transitions between states in organisms. Although major functions …
View article: Grandmother presence improved grandchild survival against childhood infections but not vaccination coverage in historical Finns
Grandmother presence improved grandchild survival against childhood infections but not vaccination coverage in historical Finns Open
Grandmother presence can improve the number and survival of their grandchildren, but what grandmothers protect against and how they achieve it remains poorly known. Before modern medical care, infections were leading causes of childhood mo…
View article: Reproductive inequality in humans and other mammals
Reproductive inequality in humans and other mammals Open
To address claims of human exceptionalism, we determine where humans fit within the greater mammalian distribution of reproductive inequality. We show that humans exhibit lower reproductive skew (i.e., inequality in the number of surviving…
View article: The long-lasting legacy of reproduction: lifetime reproductive success shapes expected genetic contributions of humans after 10 generations
The long-lasting legacy of reproduction: lifetime reproductive success shapes expected genetic contributions of humans after 10 generations Open
An individual's lifetime reproductive success (LRS) measures its realized genetic contributions to the next generation, but how well does it predict this over longer periods? Here we use human genealogical data to estimate expected individ…
View article: Sibling competition, dispersal and fitness outcomes in humans
Sibling competition, dispersal and fitness outcomes in humans Open
View article: Datasets used for the manuscript: "Sibling competition, dispersal and fitness outcomes in humans"
Datasets used for the manuscript: "Sibling competition, dispersal and fitness outcomes in humans" Open
Datasets used for the manuscript: “Sibling competition, dispersal and fitness outcomes in humans”, 10.1038/s41598-023-33700-3
View article: Datasets used for the manuscript: "Sibling competition, dispersal and fitness outcomes in humans"
Datasets used for the manuscript: "Sibling competition, dispersal and fitness outcomes in humans" Open
Datasets used for the manuscript: “Sibling competition, dispersal and fitness outcomes in humans”, 10.1038/s41598-023-33700-3
View article: What drives horse success at following human-given cues? An investigation of handler familiarity and living conditions
What drives horse success at following human-given cues? An investigation of handler familiarity and living conditions Open
View article: Grandparental co-residence and grandchild survival: the role of resource competition in a pre-industrial population
Grandparental co-residence and grandchild survival: the role of resource competition in a pre-industrial population Open
Although grandparents are and have been important alloparents to their grandchildren, they are not necessarily only beneficial but can also compete with grandchildren over limited resources. Competition over parental care or other resource…
View article: Seasonal variation in molecular and physiological stress markers in Asian elephants
Seasonal variation in molecular and physiological stress markers in Asian elephants Open
Free-living species exhibit seasonal variation in various life history traits, including vital rates such as birth and death patterns. Different physiological mechanisms are thought to underlie the expression of life history traits that co…
View article: Sex, age, and family structure influence dispersal behaviour after a forced migration
Sex, age, and family structure influence dispersal behaviour after a forced migration Open
Dispersal does not only mean moving from one environment to another, but can also refer to shifting from one social group to another. Individual characteristics such as sex, age and family structure might influence an individual's propensi…
View article: Author Correction: Mothers with higher twinning propensity had lower fertility in pre-industrial Europe
Author Correction: Mothers with higher twinning propensity had lower fertility in pre-industrial Europe Open
View article: The epidemic dynamics of three childhood infections and the impact of first vaccination in 18<sup>th</sup>and 19<sup>th</sup>century Finland
The epidemic dynamics of three childhood infections and the impact of first vaccination in 18<sup>th</sup>and 19<sup>th</sup>century Finland Open
Childhood infectious such as smallpox or measles have devasted human populations, but our knowledge on the history of public health interventions remains limited. Here, we use 100 years of newly available records in 18 th and 19 th century…