Marie Curie Actions: Inspiring Researchers - Imdea

Family fortunesIn her studies on pre-industrial people, Dr Faurie has set outto answer two key questions. Her fi rst focuses on whether thesize and composition of a family infl uences sibling survival andreproductive success, and if the so-called parental allocation ofresources affects children. Her second question addresses themechanisms of competition and cooperation between siblingsand asks how they affect younger siblings’ growth, health,hormones and education. In November 2005, she was giventhe chance to answer these questions when awarded a MarieCurie Fellowship. Dr Faurie packed her bags and left her nativeFrance for Sheffi eld in the United Kingdom.‘I have always been interested in understanding the evolutionof cooperative behaviour, having studied paternal investmentin children for several years, and I was especially fascinated byrecent fi ndings revealing the huge importance of a grandmother’srole in the family unit. This led me to think how amazing it wouldbe to study other sources of alloparental care. Studies on siblingcare had focused on many species of birds and mammals,but up until this point had been rare in humans,’ she says.Researching our ancestors in Finland andSenegalDr Faurie’s host university was in Sheffi eld, in the UnitedKingdom. It appears to have been a very successful posting,with her host university actively encouraging her to spreadher wings – notably by sending her on fi eld trips. In fact,much of Dr Faurie’s research focused on old lineages ofFinnish people recorded in church records, and her fi ndingsoffer intriguing glimpses of family lives in bygone years. Forexample, she has established that in historical Finland, some40 % of children did not reach adulthood and the mortalitypercentage rose even higher if the mother died unexpectedly.However, older brothers and sisters compensated for the lossof the mother to some extent, confi rming beyond a shadowof a doubt that older siblings can improve the chances of ayounger sibling’s survival.She also spent some time in Senegal where her studies reveal apositive correlation between the degree of support provided byolder siblings and their level of the stress hormone cortisol. Thisis consistent with the results from studies of other cooperativeHow do sibship size and composition influence survival and lifetime reproductive success?© Virpi Lummaa73