Abstract
It has been hypothesised that facial traits such as masculinity and a healthy appearance may indicate heritable qualities in males (e.g. immunocompetence) and that, consequently, female preferences for such traits may function to increase offspring viability and health. However, the putative link between paternal facial features and offspring health has not previously been tested empirically in humans. Here we present data from two traditional societies with little or no access to modern medicine and family planning technologies. Data on offspring number and offspring survival were analysed for the Agta of the Philippines and the Maya of Belize, and archive facial photographs were assessed by observers for attractiveness and masculinity. While there was no association between attractiveness and offspring survival in either population, a quadratic relationship was observed between masculinity and offspring survival in both populations, such that intermediate levels of masculinity were associated with the lowest offspring mortality, with both high and low levels of masculinity being associated with increased mortality. Neither attractiveness nor masculinity were related to fertility (offspring number) in either population. We consider how these data may or may not reconcile with current theories of female preferences for masculinity in male faces and argue that further research and replication in other traditional societies should be a key priority for the field.
Highlights
Human females appear to show systematic variation in their preferences for putative craniofacial indicators of testosterone exposure in males. Research in this area typically involves assessing variation in female preferences either for faces that are perceived as masculine, or variation in preferences for faces in which the degree of sexual dimorphism has been measured, or varied, objectively
The primary aim of the current study was to assess whether facial masculinity in males was associated with offspring mortality in two traditional societies, in order to test key assumptions of immunocompetence-based explanations for female preferences for masculinity in male faces
Like Apicella and colleagues’ data on voice pitch [17], we found no evidence of a significant general positive association between paternal masculinity and offspring survival
Summary
Citation: Boothroyd LG, Gray AW, Headland TN, Uehara RT, Waynforth D, Burt DM, et al (2017) Male Facial Appearance and Offspring Mortality in Two Traditional Societies. PLoS ONE 12(1): e0169181. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0169181 Data Availability Statement: Access to the Agta Demographic Database can be found here: https:// www.sil.org/resources/publications/entry/9299. For access to Maya data, readers should contact David Waynforth (dwaynfor@bond.edu.au). Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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