Lummaa Lab

We have several open MSc thesis projects!

Here is one of those:

Age- and sex-dependent associations between the number of older siblings and early-life survival in pre-industrial humans | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Siblings are an important part of an individual’s early-life environment and may therefore play an important role in shaping an individual’s survival. The quantification of sibling effects on survival is challenging, however, especially in long-lived ...

1. My first ever paper is out! With
@euantheyoung.bsky.social
@lummaalab.bsky.social
@erikpostma.bsky.social
@hannahdugdale.bsky.social
How do older siblings, and their sex and age, affect the survival of younger siblings? Find out by checking below.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Will a child survive? Older siblings have a powerful influence Swiss birth data from 1750 to 1870 reveal that girls who had lots of older brothers close to their own age were less likely to survive than were those who did not.

Absolutely thrilled to have my first paper be given a @nature.com research highlight! 🥳

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Who’s got the power? Studies of male and female primates show it’s not simple Most primate societies do not have clear-cut sex-biases when it comes to power.

Who’s got the power? Studies of male and female primates show it’s not simple

https://theconversation.com/whos-got-the-power-studies-of-male-and-female-primates-show-its-not-simple-263292

Female mountain gorillas can outrank males twice their size...

...and exhibit priority of access to resources over these males

Article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982225008723

Press release:
https://www.mpg.de/25119311/0730-evan-it-s-not-just-about-size-150495-x

Risk-taking incentives predict aggression heuristics in female gorillas Altmetric provides a collated score for online attention across various platforms and media.See more details

🦍 What drives female gorillas to pick fights?

A long-term study reveals that aggression isn’t just about dominance. Pregnancy, group size, and male presence also shift the dynamics of who targets whom.
buff.ly/Lh1fImW

Gorillas’ personal circumstances shape their aggression towards groupmates Animals can adapt the direction of aggression to more or less powerful rivals to suit their individual needs and social contexts

Individual circumstances & social context influence the aggressive behaviour of female #gorillas towards group members. New study by Nikolaos Smit & Martha Robbins now out in @elife.bsky.social. @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social @utu.fi More: tinyurl.com/3baw5dr7 & elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Another cool study 👇🏼coming from @lummaalab.bsky.social, this time by Veera Schroderus 🎣📖🧶🪡🇫🇮

Elisabeth Maaria Mikkonen @lummaalab.bsky.social is studying the determinants of milk cortisol concentrations in *semi* captive elephants from Myanmar 🐘🍼 #EMPSEB30

Tuhat kilometriä mummolaan – sukulaisten vaikutusta hyvinvointiin tutkitaan ensimmäistä kertaa alueellisesta näkökulmasta Pitkien välimatkojen maassa kaupungistuminen erottaa sukupolvia toisistaan. Miten se vaikuttaa lähteneiden ja jääneiden hyvinvointiin? Professori Virpi Lummaa tutkii suomalaisten sukulaisverkostojen vaikutusta hyvinvointiin alueellisesta näkökulmasta.

Eiliseltä: Tuhat kilometriä mummolaan – sukulaisten vaikutusta hyvinvointiin tutkitaan ensimmäistä kertaa alueellisesta näkökulmasta

Strategies, costs and counter‐strategies to sexual coercion Sexual conflict, the conflict between the evolutionary interests of females and males over mating, occasionally results in the evolution of traits favourable for one sex and adverse for the other. In....

A new review paper from our newest lab member!

Strategies, costs and counter-strategies to sexual coercion. 2025. Smit N onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

@melissa-gagniere.bsky.social presented her PhD work at the Aura symposium. She works on 🦊🦡🦝 behavior following an urban gradient in Finland. Follow her for more update to come or even to participate in her study!

Super proud of our PhD @markspa.bsky.social who was practicing his talk for the Aura symposium next week in Turku.
Mark will tell how studying former diseases spread can tell us about future epidemics. #humanhealth #historicaldata #humanresearch

Socioeconomic Differences in Vaccination After a Historical Vaccination Mandate This population-based cohort study examines the association of an 1883 mandatory vaccination law with vaccine coverage rates among infants aged less than 1 year in Finland from 1855 to 1900.

Even highly successful vaccine mandates insufficiently reach lower socioeconomic groups. Check out the latest research of our Human Evolutionary Health team on vaccination in historical Finns, jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
#PublicHealth #Vaccines #Mandates

Hi ! We were having some activation email issues and were not allowed to interact until just now😅.
The group is quite diverse now and includes horse, reindeer and cat research. The best is to reach out to Virpi or directly to post docs of the group via email to discuss potential collaborations :)

1/11
New preprint out with @hannahdugdale.bsky.social, @lummaalab.bsky.social, and @erikpostma.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Why do we age? And can a “natural experiment” during the Great Finnish Famine with long-term data help provide some answers?

Thank you so much, we just arrived on Bluesky but could you add our research group to the list ? Part of the group works on human life history, health evolution and diversity through historical data from the Nordic countries.