母亲及儿子.docVIP

母亲及儿子 Sons and mothers 儿子和母亲 Jul 9th 2009 From The Economist print edition Poor circumstances breed daughters 贫困的环境下容易生出女儿 THAT mother knows best is no secret. That her reproductive organs also know best may come as more of a surprise. But that is what two evolutionary biologists, Robert Trivers and Dan Willard, hypothesised nearly four decades ago. Boys, they reasoned, will thrive reproductively when they have grown big and strong in resource-rich environments. Otherwise, they will do badly. Girls, by contrast, will do reasonably well across the board and thus have a comparative advantage over their brothers in poorer situations. Parents, meanwhile, have a genetic incentive to see their progeny do well. Give a mother abundant resources, then, and her body should favour sons. Place her in difficult conditions and she should have more daughters. 众所周知母亲是睿智至极的。但是，如果说母亲的生殖器官睿智的知道需要生男还是生女则会让人大跌眼镜。而这却是罗伯特?特里弗斯和丹.维尔拉这2位进化论生物学家四十年前就提出的假设。他们认为在资源丰富的环境下，男性胚胎发育的高大而壮实，从而繁殖生存下来。如果在资源匮乏的情况下，男性胚胎则发育的较为瘦弱，不易繁殖生存。女性胚胎则恰恰相反，在任何情况下都表现的非常好。因此在贫困的环境下，相比男性胚胎，女性胚胎更有优势。同时，父母总是希望自己的后代能发育完好。因此，如果一个母亲在富足的生活条件下，她的身体倾向于孕育男孩；而如果环境较为恶劣，贫困，则更容易生出女孩。 The Trivers-Willard theory has been tested with success in several species of wild animal. Showing it to be true in people, however, has proved difficult. But a paper just published in Biology Letters by Thomas Pollet of the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands, and his colleagues makes a brave attempt to do so. Dr Pollet tests it by studying polygamous households. As wives are added to such a household, its resources will necessarily be split more ways. Even if they are shared equally, the first wife will have had a head-start on the others—and, life being what it is, she may retain a dominant position. 特拉威斯-韦尔拉理论在野生动物身上所作的几例实验中得到了证实。但是要证明其同样适用于人类身上，则是一件非常困难的事情。最近，由荷兰格罗宁根大学托马斯.波兰特及其同事在《生物通讯》杂志上发表的一篇论文则对此进行了大胆的尝试。波兰特教授通过对一夫多妻家庭的研究来证明。在这样一个家庭里，妻子的数量越来越多，家庭资产则一定会按照各种不同方式来分割。即使是进行平均分配，相比其他妻子，大老婆一定会有领先优势，也且一辈子都会占有一定的优势地位。 Much of the world has give