SynthesisBMC evolutionary biology2016
The effect of dietary restriction on reproduction: a meta-analytic perspective.
Synthesis in BMC evolutionary biology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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
32 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 73 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of immune challenge on expression of life-history and immune trait expression in sexually reproducing metazoans-a meta-analysis.BMC biology · 2020Pooled it
- Dietary restriction is evolutionarily conserved on the phenotypic and mechanistic level.EMBO reports · 2026Article
- The impacts of different dietary restriction regimens on aging and longevity: from yeast to humans.Journal of biomedical science · 2025Review
- Surviving on Limited Resources: Effects of Caloric Restriction on Growth, Gene Expression and Gut Microbiota in a Species With Male Pregnancy (Hippocampus erectus).Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Fasting increases investment in soma upon refeeding at the cost of gamete quality in zebrafish.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- The maternal energetic environment affects both egg and offspring phenotypes in green anole lizards (Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Resource availability modulates the effect of body size on reproductive development.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- A sex skew in life-history research: the problem of missing males.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Mapping sex differences in the effects of protein and carbohydrates on lifespan and reproduction in Drosophila melanogaster: is measuring nutrient intake essential?Biogerontology · 2022Article
- Parental dietary protein effects on offspring viability in insects and other oviparous invertebrates: a meta-analysis.Current research in insect science · 2022Review
- Metformin treatment of juvenile mice alters aging-related developmental and metabolic phenotypes.Mechanisms of ageing and development · 2022Article
- Oxidative Damage Is Influenced by Diet But Unaffected by Selection for Early Age of Oviposition in the Marula Fly,Frontiers in physiology · 2022Article
- The Mechanisms and Management of Age-Related Oxidative Stress in Male Hypogonadism Associated with Non-communicable Chronic Disease.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses in ecology and evolutionary biology: a PRISMA extension.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2021Article
- 'Hangry'Animal behaviour · 2021Article
- Caloric restriction in female reproduction: is it beneficial or detrimental?Reproductive biology and endocrinology : RB&E · 2021Review
- Biological Prescience: The Role of Anticipation in Organismal Processes.Frontiers in physiology · 2021Review
- Obesity and Male Reproduction; Placing the Western Diet in Context.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2021Review
- A resource-poor developmental diet reduces adult aggression in maleBehavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2021Article
- The relationship between longevity and diet is genotype dependent and sensitive to desiccation inThe Journal of experimental biology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundDietary restriction (DR), a reduction in the amount of food or particular nutrients eaten, is the most consistent environmental manipulation to extend lifespan and protect against age related diseases. Current evolutionary theory explains this effect as a shift in the resolution of the trade-off between lifespan and reproduction. However, recent studies have questioned the role of reproduction in mediating the effect of DR on longevity and no study has quantitatively investigated the effect of DR on reproduction across species.
resultsHere we report a comprehensive comparative meta-analysis of the effect of DR on reproduction. In general, DR reduced reproduction across taxa, but several factors moderated this effect. The effect of DR on reproduction was greater in well-studied model species (yeast, nematode worms, fruit flies and rodents) than non-model species. This mirrors recent results for longevity and, for reproduction, seems to result from a faster rate of decline with decreasing resources in model species. Our results also suggested that not all reproductive traits are affected equally by DR. High and moderate cost reproductive traits suffered a significant reduction with DR, but low cost traits, such as ejaculate production, did not. Although the effect of DR on reproduction was stronger in females than males, this sex difference reduced to near zero when accounting for other co-factors such as the costliness of the reproductive trait. Thus, sex differences in the effect of DR on longevity may be due to a failure to expose males to as complete a range of the costs of reproduction as females.
conclusionsWe suggest that to better understand the generality of the effect of DR, future studies should attempt to address the cause of the apparent model species bias and ensure that individuals are exposed to as many of the costs of reproduction as possible. Furthermore, our meta-analytic approach reveals a general shortage of DR studies that record reproduction, particularly in males, as well as a lack of direct side-by-side comparisons of the effect of DR on males and females.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.