Reproductive cessation in female mammals

Using decades of individual life-history records from wild lions and baboons, this study tested whether females experience a true post-reproductive lifespan analogous to human menopause. The authors found that lionesses generally remained fertile until close to the end of life, with reproduction declining gradually rather than stopping abruptly, in contrast to patterns sometimes claimed for other species. They modeled the trade-off between continued breeding and investing in surviving offspring, arguing that the demographic conditions favoring a long post-reproductive period are uncommon in these mammals. The work is widely cited in debates about the evolution of menopause and reproductive senescence, and it provides one of the most rigorous long-term datasets on age-related fertility decline in a wild felid.