Placental Interdigitation Is Associated with Reproductive Pace across Mammals

Clicks: 14
ID: 333609
2026
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Emerging

Ranked #93 of 102 articles by views in journal of evolutionary biology

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
Abstract The placenta is a transient organ mainly derived from fetal tissue that is essential for establishing metabolic and immune interactions that support healthy pregnancies in eutherian mammals. Across mammals, placentas show high morphological diversity in both the degree of tissue invasiveness and in the complexity of tissue integration between maternal and fetal tissues. This variation is thought to reflect strong selective pressures on reproductive strategies, balancing maternal investment, offspring development, resource transfer, and reproductive pace. Previous studies have explored the relationship between placental morphology and mammalian life history focusing mainly on placental invasiveness and giving less attention to placental interdigitation. Here, we expand the scope of previous comparative work by analyzing 509 mammalian species to examine how three life history traits (gestation length, interbirth intervals, and relative litter mass) are associated with placental morphology. We also test whether placental morphology covaries with broader multivariate life history structure using phylogenetic principal component analyses (pPCA). We found that, relative to invasiveness, placental interdigitation was more strongly associated with reproductive timing. Labyrinthine placentas were associated with shorter gestation lengths than villous and trabecular placentas, and species with villous placentas were associated with the longest interbirth intervals. Placental invasiveness showed no association with life history variation. Neither invasiveness nor interdigitation was associated with relative litter mass. Our results suggest that, although diverse census timing may have limited the extent of our interpretation, placental interdigitation is associated with reproductive timing (gestation length and interbirth intervals), whereas neither interdigitation nor invasiveness is associated with relative litter mass, an approximate measure of offspring mass produced per reproductive event relative to adult body mass.
Reference Key
openalex_W7223362242 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Cristiano Parmeggiani, Tiffany Pan, Mary Boyd, Varun Aravind, Meghan Forsythe, Mikayla Johnstone, Amy M. Boddy
Are you one of these authors? Claim your profile
Journal journal of evolutionary biology
Year 2026
DOI
10.1093/jeb/voag117
URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/jeb/voag117
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.