
Contact
17, place du Trocadéro
75016 Paris
France
Responsabilités dans l'unité
Head of the team Biodémographie humaine (BioDemo)
Associated Researcher at the Mortality, Health & Epidemiology team, Institut National d’Études Démographiques
Responsabilités hors unité
Associate editor of Theoretical Population Biology
Board member of the Evolutionary Demography Society
Enseignements
Main Teaching:
- Human biodemography - 30hrs, ‹Cours Muséum› for Master 2 (3ECTS) and PhDs (usually in November)
- Dynamique des populations - Level 1 & 2, hrs, Teaching of the Doctoral School 227 (usually in May)
Présentation
Main research interest
I am a demographer with broad interests in understanding the biological, environmental, cultural and social determinants of demographic traits (as fertility and survival) in humans.
Questions that particularly interest me include (i) how and why such traits vary over time and between populations, (ii) how these demographic traits influence (and are influenced by) population dynamics, and (iii) how they have evolved during human history. My main research focuses are currently on two aspects:
The investigation of the joint evolution of life-history and sociality (in the ecological sense) in our species.
To study of the evolution of senescence in our species : Why do we age ? At what pace ? Do all functional systems age at the same pace ? What are the social drivers of - and the constraints on - senescence ?

A Mising girl in a rice field (Assam, 2003)
Post-doctoral fellows
Pauline Hervois Knowledge about Infertility: Data (Level, Sources) and Speeches
Pauline Hervois Identifying the causes of cretinism: Investigations and etiological studies on an endemic disease (France, 19th century)
Victor Ronget (Funded by the ANR MathKinD) - Development and analysis kin & age structured model in humans
- Tazzio Tissot (Funded by the labex BCDiv) - Vieillir pour ne pas mourir : coévolution de la sénescence et des cancers
PhD Students
- Clémence Elmira (with Emmanuel Cohen) - Profils agro-alimentaires pluriels et santé dans un contexte de transition nutritionnelle aux Antilles
- Lucie Vanhoutte (with Emmanuel Cohen, Géraldine Duthé) - Évolution de la mortalité adulte sous les effets conjoints des transitions nutritionnelle, épidémiologique et démographique : le cas du Sénégal
- Margaux Bieuville (with Tazzio Tissot) - Spatially-structured cellular demography: application to mutation accumulation in tissues and consequences for cancers and organism senescence.
- Christophe Coste (with Frédéric Austerlitz) - The costs of reproduction in evolutionary demography : An application of Multitrait Population Projection Matrix models
- Goki Ly (with Raphaëlle Chaix and Frédéric Austerlitz) - Du système de parenté à la diversité génétique dans les populations humaines d’Asie du Sud-Est
- Julie Landes (with Pierre-Yves Henry) - Compromis entre traits d’histoire de vie et saisonnalité chez un primate hétérotherme
Education
- 2021 – Professor at the National Museum of Natural History, Paris, France
- 2008 – Lecturer at the National Museum of Natural History, Paris, France
- 2005-2008 Postdoctoral fellow, Evolutionary Demography Team, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
- 2000-2004 Ph.D thesis in Human Ecology and Demography, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France. Subject : « Investissement maternel et survie de l’enfant:approche démographique, génétique et évolutive » (supervisor : Pr. E. Heyer).
- Rewarded by the “Prix Bertillon de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris”, 2004).
- 1999 – 2000 Master’s Degree in Human Population Demography and Biology. Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France. Subject : « Study of selective pressures on BRCA1 breast cancer susceptibility gene » (supervisor : Pr. E. Heyer).
- 1998 – 1999 Bachelor’s Honours in Cellular Biology and Biochemistry, University of Sciences, Angers, France. Internship in epidemiology- Genetics, Center of Cancerology, Paul Papin, Angers, France. Subject : « Determination of an optimal strategy to detect BRCA1 mutations by analyzing familial breast and ovarian cancer profiles » (supervisor : Dr A. Daver).
Projets
The Biodemography of Ageing and Longevity, Cambridge University Press
Edited by Jean-François Lemaître (CNRS) & Samuel Pavard (MNHN)

8th meeting of the Evolutionary Demography Society in Paris the 29-31 of March 2023
In coll. with. Sarah Cubaynes

Project TRANSITIONS – Évolution de la mortalité adulte sous les effets conjoints des transitions nutritionnelle, épidémiologique et démographique: le cas du Sénégal (Prix de la Fondation ENGIE Talents de la recherche 2021)
Col. Lucie Vanhoutte (doctorante MNHN), Emmanuel Cohen (CR, CNRS), Géraldine Duthé (DR INED)
L’objectif du projet interdisciplinaire TRANSITIONS consiste, par l’analyse de données démographiques, épidémiologiques et socio-anthropologiques à évaluer comment les changements de modes de vie et d’alimentation influencent la distribution des maladies et les profils de mortalité de la population rurale Sénégalaise.
ANR Project MathKinD - Mathematics of Kinship Demography: new developments and application to Humans (2019 - 2023)
In coll. with. Sarah Cubaynes, Christophe Coste & Victor Ronget (in coll. with G. Pison and J-M Robine)
Researchers from the MathKinD project have developed a new method for linking genealogy to population dynamics. This work, at the crossroads between ecology and demography, has consequences on predicting the viability of species, monitoring their dynamics in time and space.
See article in the journal du CNRS

Who keeps children alive? is the title of a review from Rebecca Sear and Ruth Mace (2008, Evolution and Human Behavior). It is also a key question concerning the evolution of cooperative breeding and life-history traits in humans.
Terrains de recherche
Sénégal (TRANSISTIONS project, 2021)
Laos and Cambodia during the ANR project SoGen (Resp. R. Chaix, 2010-2014)
Assam and Megahlaya (India, 2003)
Publications
- août 2024 — Approaches and methods to study wildlife cancer. Abstract The last few years have seen a surge of interest from field ecologists and evolutionary biologists to study neoplasia… Journal of Animal Ecology vol. n/a, n/a,,
- Lemaitre Jean-Francois, et Pavard Samuel. 2024. « The Eternal Youth of Ageing Research ». The Biodemography of Ageing and Longevity. Cambridge University Press.
- Lemaitre Jean-Francois, Gaillard Jean-Michel, Pavard Samuel, Criscuolo Francois, et Bertile Fabrice. 2024. « Perspectives in Comparative Biology of Ageing ». The Biodemography of Ageing and Longevity. Cambridge University Press.
- Pavard S., et Metcalf C. J. E. 2024. « Trade-Offs Between Mortality Components in Life History Evolution: The Case of Cancers ». Human Evolutionary Demography. Open Book Publishers. doi:10.11647/obp.0251.31.
- Pavard Samuel, et Gurven Michael D_. 2024. « Evolution of Human Reproduction, Ageing and Longevity ». The Biodemography of Ageing and Longevity. Cambridge University Press.
- mars 2023 — Modeling of senescent cell dynamics predicts a late-life decrease in cancer incidence. Evolutionary Applications vol. 16, n° 3, dir. {Blackwell} p. 609-624,
- Pavard S., et Darlu Pierre. 2022. « En France, Les Humains Sont-Ils Encore Sujets à Une évolution génétique ? ». In La Terre, Le Vivant, Les Humains. Petites Et Grandes découvertes De l’histoire Naturelle. https://hal-mnhn.archives-ouvertes.fr/mnhn-03835825.
- mars 2022 — Reproductive Seasonality in The Baka Pygmies, Environmental Factors and Climatic Changes. PLOS ONE , n° 17, p. 1-18,
- 2022 — Cancer Risk Across Mammals. Nature vol. 601, n° 7892, p. 263-267,
- mars 2021 — Evolutionary Demographic Models Reveal The Strength of Purifying Selection on Susceptibility Alleles to Late-Onset Diseases. Nature Ecology & Evolution vol. 5, n° 3, p. 392-400,