Virpi Lummaa

Virpi Lummaa is a Finnish evolutionary biologist and ecologist. She is an Academy of Finland professor at the University of Turku. Her research interests include ageing, lifespan, and natural selection in contemporary human populations. Lummaa is currently the Principal Investigator of both the Human Life History Group based at the University of Turku and the Myanmar Timber Elephant Project. She has received a starting grant from the European Research Council. Overall, her data support the claim that grandmothers can improve infant survival, but noted that there were exceptions. For example, simultaneous child bearing and raising by daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law actually decreased child survival rate. Lummaa has also studied the grandmother hypothesis in Asian elephants. In addition to testing the grandmother hypothesis, Lummaa has used this dataset to evaluate the impact of having a male twin on females. She found that females with a twin brother had reduced fertility, suggesting a prenatal effect on females with a twin brother. Lummaa has also studied the impact of stressful periods upon miscarriage rates. Interestingly, male fetuses were more likely to be miscarried during difficult times than female fetuses. This resulted in a skewed sex ratio in the population. Furthermore, Lummaa has used this dataset to investigate evolution in contemporary human populations.

Myanmar Timber Elephant Project Through the Myanmar Timber Elephant Project, Lummaa studies similar topics including health, survival and reproduction in Asian elephants. Lummaa argues that despite their appearance, the fact that elephants share long life spans, reproductive history, and family structure with humans makes them useful animals to study. This work is based on a century's work of longitudinal demographic data as well as new data collected from live elephants. Furthermore, her work has revealed that calves born to stressed mothers during harsh weather actually age faster than other calves. She has expressed concern about captive elephant populations used in the timber industry and in tourism. Additionally, she is concerned about the impact these industries have on the wild populations from which the captive population is drawn.

Selected publications