Individual fitness and phenotypic selection in age-structured populations with constant growth rates.

Powerful multiple regression-based approaches are commonly used to measure the strength of phenotypic selection, which is the statistical association between individual fitness and trait values. Age structure and overlapping generations complicate determinations of individual fitness, contributing to the popularity of alternative methods for measuring natural selection that do not depend upon such measures. The application of regression-based techniques for measuring selection in these situations requires a demographically appropriate, conceptually sound, and observable measure of individual fitness. It has been suggested that Fisher’s reproductive value applied to an individual at its birth is such a definition. Here I offer support for this assertion by showing that multiple regression applied to this measure and vital rates (age-specific survival and fertility rates) yields the same selection gradients for vital rates as those inferred from Hamilton’s classical results. I discuss how multiple regressions, applied to individual reproductive value at birth, can be used efficiently to estimate measures of phenotypic selection that are problematic for sensitivity analyses. These include nonlinear selection, components of the opportunity for selection, and multi-level selection

Triparental ageing in a laboratory population of an insect with maternal care

Parental age at reproduction influences offspring size and survival by affecting prenatal and postnatal conditions in a wide variety of species, including humans. However, most investigations into this manifestation of ageing focus upon maternal age effects; the effects of paternal age and interactions between maternal and paternal age are often neglected. Furthermore, even when maternal age effects are studied, pre- and post-natal effects are often confounded. Using a cross-fostered experimental design, we investigated the joint effects of pre-natal paternal and maternal and post-natal maternal ages on five traits related to offspring outcomes in a laboratory population of a species of burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides. We found a significant positive effect of the age of the egg producer on larval survival to dispersal. We found more statistical evidence for interaction effects, which acted on larval survival and egg length. Both interaction effects were negative and involved the age of the egg-producer, indicating that age-related pre-natal maternal improvements were mitigated by increasing age in fathers and foster mothers. These results agree with an early study that found little evidence for maternal senescence, but it emphasizes that parental age interactions may be an important contributor to ageing patterns. We discuss how the peculiar life history of this species may promote selection to resist the evolution of parental age effects, and how this might have influenced our ability to detect senescence

A unified framework for evolutionary genetic and physiological theories of aging

Why and how we age are 2 intertwined questions that have fascinated scientists for many decades. However, attempts to answer these questions remain compartmentalized, preventing a comprehensive understanding of the aging process. We argue that the current lack of knowledge about the evolution of aging mechanisms is due to a lack of clarity regarding evolutionary theories of aging that explicitly involve physiological processes: the disposable soma theory (DST) and the developmental theory of aging (DTA). In this Essay, we propose a new hierarchical model linking genes to vital rates, enabling us to critically reevaluate the DST and DTA in terms of their relationship to evolutionary genetic theories of aging (mutation accumulation (MA) and antagonistic pleiotropy (AP)). We also demonstrate how these 2 theories can be incorporated in a unified hierarchical framework. The new framework will help to generate testable hypotheses of how the hallmarks of aging are shaped by natural selection.</p

The distribution of the Lansing Effect across animal species

Maternal senescence is the reduction in individual performance associated with increased maternal age at conception. When manifested on adult lifespan, this phenomenon is known as the “Lansing Effect.” Single-species studies report both maternal age-related increases and decreases in adult lifespan, but no comprehensive review of the literature has yet been undertaken to determine if the Lansing Effect is a widespread phenomenon. To address this knowledge gap, we performed a meta-analysis of maternal aging rates taken from all available published studies. We recovered 78 estimates from 22 studies representing 15 species. All studies taken together suggest a propensity for a Lansing Effect, with an estimated average effect of maternal age on offspring’s adult lifespan of between -17% and -22%, depending upon our specific choice of model. We failed to find a significant effect of animal class or insect order but given the oversampling of insect species in the published literature and the paucity of vertebrate studies, we infer that only rotifers and insects yet demonstrate a tendency toward expressing the phenomenon

Plasticity and rectangularity in survival curves

Living systems inevitably undergo a progressive deterioration of physiological function with age and an increase of vulnerability to disease and death. To maintain health and survival, living systems should optimize survival strategies with adaptive interactions among molecules, cells, organs, individuals, and environments, which arises plasticity in survival curves of living systems. In general, survival dynamics in a population is mathematically depicted by a survival rate, which monotonically changes from 1 to 0 with age. It would be then useful to find an adequate function to describe complicated survival dynamics. Here we describe a flexible survival function, derived from the stretched exponential function by adopting an age-dependent shaping exponent. We note that the exponent is associated with the fractal-like scaling in cumulative mortality rate. The survival function well depicts general features in survival curves; healthy populations exhibit plasticity and evolve towards rectangular-like survival curves, as examples in humans or laboratory animals

Appendix A. Proof that regressing individuals’ reproductive values on vital rates yields Hamilton’s sensitivities.

Proof that regressing individuals’ reproductive values on vital rates yields Hamilton’s sensitivities