ArticleEvolutionary biology2017
The Rarity of Survival to Old Age Does Not Drive the Evolution of Senescence.
Article in Evolutionary biology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
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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.
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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.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evolutionary genetics of ageing.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Review
- Directional and disruptive selection in populations structured by class and continuous ontogeny under incomplete plasticity.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Evolution of Senescence by Damage Accumulation That Accelerates With Age Throughout an Organism's Lifespan.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- The pace and shape of ant ageing.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Agelessness is possible under the disposable soma theory but system complexity makes it unlikely.Journal of theoretical biology · 2024Article
- Disagreement on foundational principles of biological aging.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Article
- Pace and shape of senescence in three species of duckweed.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- A laboratory and simulation platform to integrate individual life history traits and population dynamics.Nature computational science · 2022Article
- Medawar and Hamilton on the selective forces in the evolution of ageing.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2021Article
- The cecal appendix is correlated with greater maximal longevity in mammals.Journal of anatomy · 2021Article
- Love and longevity: A Social Dependency Hypothesis.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Review
- Senescence: why and where selection gradients might not decline with age.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Antagonistic pleiotropy and the evolution of extraordinary lifespans in eusocial organisms.Evolution letters · 2021Article
- Evolution, Chance, and Aging.Frontiers in genetics · 2021Review
- Lifespan Extension in Long-Lived Vertebrates Rooted in Ecological Adaptation.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2021Review
- The Danaid Theory of Aging.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2021Review
- Stress-related changes in leukocyte profiles and telomere shortening in the shortest-lived tetrapod, Furcifer labordi.BMC evolutionary biology · 2020Article
- Longevity and the drift barrier: Bridging the gap between Medawar and Hamilton.Evolution letters · 2020Article
- Why leveraging sex differences in immune trade-offs may illuminate the evolution of senescence.Functional ecology · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The evolution of senescence is often explained by arguing that, in nature, few individuals survive to be old and hence it is evolutionarily unimportant what happens to organisms when they are old. A corollary to this idea is that extrinsically imposed mortality, because it reduces the chance of surviving to be old, favors the evolution of senescence. We show that these ideas, although widespread, are incorrect. Selection leading to senescence does not depend directly on survival to old age, but on the shape of the stable age distribution, and we discuss the implications of this important distinction. We show that the selection gradient on mortality declines with age even in the hypothetical case of zero mortality, when survivorship does not decline. Changing the survivorship function by imposing age independent mortality has no affect on the selection gradients. A similar result exists for optimization models: age independent mortality does not change the optimal result. We propose an alternative, brief explanation for the decline of selection gradients, and hence the evolution of senescence.
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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.