Sister Flies

[caption id="attachment_1440" align="aligncenter" width="557" caption="Just a few of Brigham Young's wives."][/caption]

A recent reflection upon past polygamist cultures led to the conclusion that Mormons and fruit flies shared more than a want for multiple partners.  While studying the Mormon polygamists of Utah in the 1800s, it was found that Brigham Young, who had 55 wives, produced only 56 children.  Although 56 children is nothing to scoff at, one would expect more offspring from 55 producing females.  Did Young believe that a child per wife was enough, or was there some kind of limiting factor?  These strange findings led scientists to believe that Mormons were plagued with something called the Bateman gradient.  The Bateman gradient, a trait often found is fruit flies, designated that “the more sexual partners a male fruit fly had, the lower the fecundity of females of each of those partners.”  The gradient, first observed by geneticist Angus Bateman,  was originally observed in fruit flies.  The Bateman gradient is generally a rarely observed trait and there are not many examples of its occurrence other than in generations of fruit flies, the Soay sheep, and now 19th century Mormons.  The results of the study were quite clear, in the Mormon society the more wives a man had, the less children those women produced.  This and other factors may have easily led to the lack of success of the Utah polygamy experiment.

One wife is enough, and 56 children is just far too many.  I think the amount of children that each wife produced would be a matter of preference, maybe each wife didn't want to deal with three of her own children and then help if her other 54 sister-wives needed some help with their children.  Or perhaps many of Young's wives developed an overlapping ovulation cycle, and Brigham just wasn't up for the challenge.  There are many different ideas that disprove the Bateman gradient as the reason for the fewer amount of children, but who knows which one is the real reason?