User:Joy-t-g/sandbox

My edits for the Parental Investment wikipedia will be focused both on editing parts of the preexisting sections I've identified to more accurate wording, and to to conduct a literature search on JSTOR to see if there have been any new developments on the topic of parental investment in the field of reproductive ecology. I expect to find research that will add to preexisting categories within the wikipedia page (perhaps corroborating or perhaps putting to question pre existing hypotheses) as well as potentially needing to add new subsections or renaming old ones along the way.

One edit to the original wiki page which I would like to do is in the introduction, in the paragraph directly receding the table of contents. This is because a previous wiki editor suggested that Trivers parental investment theory is an alternative to Fishers. While not majorly incorrect, I think the wording could be improved because the way it currently reads, is a little misleading (as the theory is not an alternative to Fishers but rather expands on it in regards to humans).

I would like to add one section about alloparental care as learned in class. This is because I think it relates directly to a lot of topics covered on the page, and would further the understanding of the reader in regards to the effects of care on offspring, the cost benefit of care to parents and offspring, and the evolution of our species in regards to this.

I am currently undecided as to whether I would like to add this information to the "Parental Care" sub-section or to the "Trivers Hypothesis" subsection. I am leaning towards the former, by adding an "alternative to parental investment" sub-header therein-which, which can stand as an answer to the section on parent-offspring conflict, as, this would reduce stress on the parents, therefore allowing them to mate more/ direct more resources to their offspring to increase the likelihood of survival. My draft for this section is as follows:

Alloparental Care:

Alloparental care also referred to as 'Allomothering,' is when a member of a community, apart from the biological parents of the infant, partake in offspring care provision. A range of behaviors fall under the term alloparental care, some of which are: carrying, feeding, watching over, protecting, and grooming. Through alloparental care stress on parents, especially the mother, can be reduced, therefore reducing the negative effects of the parent-offspring conflict on the mother. In While the apparent altruistic nature of the behavior may seem at odds with Darwin's theory of natural selection, as taking care of offspring which are not one's own would not increase one's direct fitness, while taking time, energy and resources away from raising one's own offspring, the behavior can be explained evolutionarily as increasing indirect fitness, as the offspring is likely to be non-descendent kin, therefore carrying some of the genetics of the alloparent.

The Grandmother Hypothesis:

It has been proposed that menopause, or the cessation of ovulation by women after a certain age, is a trait in humans that has been selected for by evolution in order for elder women within societies to not be rearing their own young, freeing them up instead to help with caring for their children's offspring. This is also known as the grandmother hypothesis, and was originally proposed by G. C. Williams. Therefore the evolution of menopause could be an answer to the issues associated with the parent offspring conflict, as well as ensuring that the last few children born by women had a greater chance of survival (if a woman becomes infertile before death).

Citations:

Williams, George C. “Pleiotropy, Natural Selection, and the Evolution of Senescence.” Evolution, vol. 11, no. 4, 1957, pp. 398–411. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2406060.