Menopause: why does fertility end before life?

Menopause is associated with an ultimate cessation of child-bearing potential. Medical research on menopause focuses mostly on the underlying physiological changes associated with menopause. By contrast, evolutionary biologists are interested in understanding why women lose their potential to reproduce before the end of their lives. Evolution by natural selection predicts that the behaviors that we observe today are products of generations of selection on the genes that govern those behaviors. Since one would expect an individual reproducing throughout its life to produce more offspring than an individual stopping early, one would seldom expect genes for menopause to be selected for during our evolutionary past. This article discusses how menopause and prolonged lifespan might be explained by evolutionary theory, and highlights some angles for future research.