Diversity of ageing across the tree of life

Owen R. Jones et al.[EN] Evolution drives, and is driven by, demography. A genotype moulds its phenotype’s age patterns of mortality and fertility in an environment; these two patterns in turn determine the genotype’s fitness in that environment. Hence, to understand the evolution of ageing, age patterns of mortality and reproduction need to be compared for species across the tree of life. However, few studies have done so and only for a limited range of taxa. Here we contrast standardized patterns over age for 11 mammals, 12 other vertebrates, 10 invertebrates, 12 vascular plants and a green alga. Although it has been predicted that evolution should inevitably lead to increasing mortality and declining fertility with age after maturity, there is great variation among these species, including increasing, constant, decreasing, humped and bowed trajectories for both long- and short-lived species. This diversity challenges theoreticians to develop broader perspectives on the evolution of ageing and empiricists to study the demography of more species.We thank S. Alberts for data on baboon demography, J. Curtsinger for data on Drosophila demography and O. Burger, D. Levitis, B. Pietrzak, F. Quade, F. Ringelhan and L. Vinicius for contributing published data about various species. J.W.V. and A.S. acknowledge support from NIH grant PO1 AG-031719. H.C. acknowledges a Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Advanced Grant 322989 from the European Research Council. R.S.-G. acknowledges support from ARC DP110100727. A.B. acknowledges funding from the Max Planck Society to establish the Max Planck Research Group ‘Modeling the Evolution of Aging’.Peer reviewe