Human Sexual Selection » height . Mon, 17 May 2010 01:36:54 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 Sexual Dimorphism in Humans: Height ./?p=39&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sexual-dimorphism-in-humans-height ./?p=39#comments Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:51:45 +0000 Avery ./?p=39 The fact that there is a sexual height dimorphism in humans–men are taller, on average, and women are shorter–is widely accepted.  This is probably the least controversial dimorphism that exists and thus possibly, then, good and broadly acceptable evidence for (at least past) sexual selection pressures in human evolution.  For these reasons, we read a few articles about human height dimorphisms for our meeting last week.  We ended up focusing on physical reproductive pressures that could lead to this dimorphism–this was the specific pressure that came up in analysis on what specific pressure causes this trend.  We recommend finding the articles listed below if you’re interested in this topic!

Some problems we had with the studies were:
1. we didn’t have the math background to judge the findings
2. we wished we had access to the actual data sets

Informal Bibliography for this discussion:
“Human fertility variation, size-related obstetrical performance and the evolution of sexual stature dimorphism” by J.-F. Guegan, A.T. Teriokhin and F. Thomas (2000)
“Women’s height, reproductive success and the evolution of sexual dimorphism in modern humans” by Daniel Nettle (2002)

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