Bruce Ellis: University of Arizona

Life history theory is used to explain how individuals adapt their physiology, behavior, and reproduction to different social and ecological conditions. Using a life history framework, I will present a program of research examining linkages between childhood experiences (including familial and extra-familial conditions), pubertal development, sexual activity, and health, highlighting the important distinction between harsh versus unpredictable environmental contexts, the special role of fathers in regulating daughters’ sexual development, differential susceptibility to environmental influences, and effects of life-history trade-offs on health. An evolutionary, life history perspective emphasizes that, when organisms encounter stressful environments, it does not so much disturb their development as direct or regulate it toward strategies that are adaptive under stressful conditions, even if those strategies are currently harmful in terms of the long-term welfare of the individual or society as a whole.