ArticleBMC evolutionary biology2019
Asian elephants exhibit post-reproductive lifespans.
Article in BMC evolutionary biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Reproductive Fitness and the Links to Chronic Disease and Systemic Aging.Physiology (Bethesda, Md.) · 2026Review
- Revised Age Estimates for Northern Resident Killer Whales (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Of Elephants and Other Mammals: A Comparative Review of Reproductive Tumors and Potential Impact on Conservation.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Review
- A laboratory and simulation platform to integrate individual life history traits and population dynamics.Nature computational science · 2022Article
- Investigating associations between nematode infection and three measures of sociality in Asian elephants.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2022Article
- The Second Annual Symposium of the Midwest Aging Consortium: The Future of Aging Research in the Midwestern United States.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2021Article
- Elephant Genomes Reveal Accelerated Evolution in Mechanisms Underlying Disease Defenses.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Handler familiarity helps to improve working performance during novel situations in semi-captive Asian elephants.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- A long postreproductive life span is a shared trait among genetically distinct killer whale populations.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Aging: What We Can Learn From Elephants.Frontiers in aging · 2021Review
- Evaluating the Reliability of Non-Specialist Observers in the Behavioural Assessment of Semi-Captive Asian Elephant Welfare.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2020Article
- Lack of intergenerational reproductive conflict, rather than lack of inclusive fitness benefits, explains absence of post-reproductive lifespan in long-finned pilot whales.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe existence of extended post-reproductive lifespan is an evolutionary puzzle, and its taxonomic prevalence is debated. One way of measuring post-reproductive life is with post-reproductive representation, the proportion of adult years lived by females after cessation of reproduction. Analyses of post-reproductive representation in mammals have claimed that only humans and some toothed whale species exhibit extended post-reproductive life, but there are suggestions of a post-reproductive stage for false killer whales and Asian elephants. Here, we investigate the presence of post-reproductive lifespan in Asian elephants using an extended demographic dataset collected from semi-captive timber elephants in Myanmar. Furthermore, we investigate the sensitivity of post-reproductive representation values to availability of long-term data over 50 years.
resultsWe find support for the presence of an extended post-reproductive stage in Asian elephants, and that post-reproductive representation and its underlying demographic rates depend on the length of study period in a long-lived animal.
conclusionsThe extended post-reproductive lifespan is unlikely due to physiological reproductive cessation, and may instead be driven by mating preferences or condition-dependent fertility. Our results also show that it is crucial to revisit such population measures in long-lived species as more data is collected, and if the typical lifespan of the species exceeds the initial study period.
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