Menopause: Adaptation or Epiphenomenon?

ARTICLESM enopause: Adaptation or Epiphenomenon? JOCELYN SCOTT PECCEIE volutionary biologists consider allcomplex design features of organismsto be ultimately the result of naturalselection. As such, menopause can al-ways be considered an Adaptation . Atthe same time, it is also recognizedthat an Adaptation is always morpho-logically, physiologically, and devel-opmentally constrained by an organ-ism s phylogenetic of origin is whether meno-pause is primarily an Adaptation , inthe sense that selection directly fa-vored a postreproductive life span inhuman females, or whether it is anepiphenomenon of selection for effi-cient early reproduction or physiolog-ical constraints preventing prolonga-tion of fertility in the presence ofincreases in human longevity. The dis-tinction between adaptations, fitnesstrade-offs, and true phylogenetic con-straints is the level of to the role of constraintswithout explanation of why these con-straints themselves are not subject toevolutionary change constitute proxi-mate explanations.

Menopause is a nonfacultative and irreversible cessation of fertility that occurs in all female conspecifics well before the senescence of other somatic systems and the end of the average adult life span (Fig. 1). 1–3 So defined, menopause occurs

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  Adaptation, Menopause, Adaptation or epiphenomenon, Epiphenomenon

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