ReviewProceedings. Biological sciences2011
Before senescence: the evolutionary demography of ontogenesis.
Review in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Gene expression and co-expression heterogeneity patterns and biodemography analyses during the cell cycle encourage aging studies in archaea.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Timing of mortality during development alters the evolution of aging.BMC ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Heatwave duration, intensity and timing as drivers of performance in larvae of a marine invertebrate.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Imprinted habitat selection varies across dispersal phases in a raptor species.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Juvenile mortality and sibling replacement: a kin selection approach.Evolution letters · 2024Article
- Long-term satellite tracking reveals patterns of long-distance dispersal in juvenile and adult Arctic foxes (Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Smoothing, Decomposing and Forecasting Mortality Rates.European journal of population = Revue europeenne de demographie · 2021Article
- Genetic and epigenetic Muller's ratchet as a mechanism of frailty and morbidity during aging: a demographic genetic model.Human genetics · 2020Article
- Spatial capture-recapture reveals age- and sex-specific survival and movement in stream amphibians.Oecologia · 2019Article
- Exploration during early life: distribution, habitat and orientation preferences in juvenile king penguins.Movement ecology · 2019Article
- Do slower movers have lower reproductive success and higher mutation load?Evolution letters · 2018Article
- How Has the Lower Boundary of Human Mortality Evolved, and Has It Already Stopped Decreasing?Demography · 2018Article
- A Cause-of-Death Decomposition of Young Adult Excess Mortality.Demography · 2018Article
- Is meiosis a fundamental cause of inviability among sexual and asexual plants and animals?Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Article
- Age-Related Changes in Locomotor Performance Reveal a Similar Pattern for Caenorhabditis elegans, Mus domesticus, Canis familiaris, Equus caballus, and Homo sapiens.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2017Article
- Insights into mortality patterns and causes of death through a process point of view model.Biogerontology · 2017Review
- Quantifying Intrinsic and Extrinsic Contributions to Human Longevity: Application of a Two-Process Vitality Model to the Human Mortality Database.Demography · 2016Article
- Compression of Morbidity and Mortality: New Perspectives.North American actuarial journal : NAAJ · 2016Article
- On the beginning of mortality acceleration.Demography · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
The age-specific mortality curve for many species, including humans, is U-shaped: mortality declines with age in the developing cohort (ontogenescence) before increasing with age (senescence). The field of evolutionary demography has long focused on understanding the evolution of senescence while largely failing to address the evolution of ontogenescence. The current review is the first to gather the few available hypotheses addressing the evolution of ontogenescence, examine the basis and assumptions of each and ask what the phylogenetic extent of ontogenescence may be. Ontogenescence is among the most widespread of life-history traits, occurring in every population for which I have found sufficiently detailed data, in major groups throughout the eukaryotes, across many causes of death and many life-history types. Hypotheses seeking to explain ontogenescence include those based on kin selection, the acquisition of robustness, heterogeneous frailties and life-history optimization. I propose a further hypothesis, arguing that mortality drops with age because most transitions that could trigger the risks caused by genetic and developmental malfunctions are concentrated in early life. Of these hypotheses, only those that frame ontogenescence as an evolutionary by-product rather than an adaptation can explain the tremendous diversity of organisms and environments in which it occurs.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.