By tracking a group of individuals through time, cohort studies provide fundamental insights into the developmental time course and causes of health and disease. Evolutionary life history theory seeks to explain patterns of growth, development, reproduction and senescence, and inspires a range of hypotheses that are testable using the longitudinal data from cohort studies. Here we review two decades of life history theory-motivated work conducted in collaboration with the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS), a birth cohort study that enrolled more than 3000 pregnant women in the Philippines in 1983 and has since followed these women, their offspring and grandoffspring. This work has provided evidence that reproduction carries "costs" to cellular maintenance functions, potentially speeding senescence, and revealed an unusual form of genetic plasticity in which the length of telomeres inherited across generations is influenced by reproductive timing in paternal ancestors. Men in Cebu experience hormonal and behavioural changes in conjunction with changes in relationship and fatherhood status that are consistent with predictions based upon other species that practice bi-parental care. The theoretical expectation that early life cues of mortality or environmental unpredictability will motivate a "fast" life history strategy are confirmed for behavioural components of reproductive decision making, but not for maturational tempo, while our work points to a broader capacity for early life developmental calibration of systems like immunity, reproductive biology and metabolism. Our CLHNS findings illustrate the power of life history theory as an integrative, lifecourse framework to guide longitudinal studies of human populations.

中文翻译：

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进化生命史理论作为队列研究的组织框架：来自宿务纵向健康与营养调查的见解。

通过追踪一段时间内的一群人，队列研究提供了关于发育时间过程以及健康和疾病原因的基本见解。进化生活史理论试图解释生长，发育，繁殖和衰老的模式，并启发了一系列可以用队列研究的纵向数据检验的假设。在这里，我们回顾了与宿务市纵向健康与营养调查（CLHNS）合作开展的基于生命史理论的二十年研究，这项出生队列研究于1983年在菲律宾招募了3000多名孕妇，此后一直关注这些妇女，他们的后代和后代。这项工作提供了证据，表明繁殖会给细胞维持功能带来“成本”，并可能加速衰老，并揭示了遗传可塑性的一种不同寻常的形式，其中世代遗传的端粒的长度受父系祖先的生殖时间影响。宿雾的男性会经历荷尔蒙和行为的变化，以及亲戚和父亲身份的变化，这与基于其他实行双亲照顾的物种的预测相一致。从理论上预期死亡率或环境不可预测性的早期生命线索将激发“快速”的生命历史策略，这是生殖决策的行为组成部分所证实的，而不是成熟速度所证实的，而我们的工作则指出了早期生命发展校准的更广泛的能力免疫，生殖生物学和新陈代谢等系统。