ArticleScience advances2025
Sexual selection drives sex difference in adult life expectancy across mammals and birds.
Article in Science advances, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
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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.
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.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Why Some People Live Past 100: The Role of the Immune System in Centenarians, Semi-Supercentenarians and Supercentenarians.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Sex-specific biological aging clocks across organs and omics.Nature medicine · 2026Article
- Leukocyte profiles reveal sex and age differences in immune investment in a polygynous bat.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- Germ cells are hidden contributors to sex differences in vertebrate lifespan.The Journal of reproduction and development · 2026Review
- Temporal improvements in elephant longevity challenge the notion of compromised survival in zoos.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Asymmetric life-history trade-offs shape sex-biased longevity patterns.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Single-cell transcriptomics reveals diversity and conservation of chicken lymphocytes.Poultry science · 2026Article
- Interacting effects of sex and age on immune responses in a polygynous bat with male-biased mortality.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Affiliative and agonistic interactions distinguish sex-biased social groups of greater spear-nosed bats, Phyllostomus hastatus.PloS one · 2026Article
- Transcriptome analysis of ageing in a long-lived seabird reveals sex-specific differences across age classes in immune and DNA repair pathways.Frontiers in aging · 2026Article
- Reproductive senescence in a polymorphic raptor: phenotypic, sex, and environmental effects.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Across human cultures and historical periods, women, on average, live longer than men, a pattern best understood from a comparative evolutionary perspective. Here, we analyzed adult life expectancy in 528 mammal and 648 bird species in zoos. Like humans, 72% of mammals exhibited a female life expectancy advantage, while 68% of birds showed a male advantage, as expected from the harmful effects of sex chromosomes described by the heterogametic sex hypothesis. Yet, sex differences varied widely. In zoos, we found strong evidence that this variation generally correlated with both the mating system and sexual size dimorphism. Although with weaker evidence, the patterns remained consistent in populations from the wild, with an even larger effect of the mating system. Thus, even in zoos, where environmental pressures are largely reduced, precopulatory sexual selection seems to play a fundamental role in shaping sex differences in life expectancy in mammals and birds.
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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.