Fig 1. Proposed model of the relationship between maternal origin, stress reactivity, thrifty phenotype, maternal care, and offspring survival.

Litter size is a covariate in the model. Small circles with an “e” represent error (leftover variance due to flaws in measurements and estimations). Arrows going out of the latent factors (big circles) represent factor loadings, while all other arrows represent regression weights. The model overall had a bad fit to the data. After testing the measurement model with all variables here, we revised this proposed model.