Abstract
What determines variation between individuals in how they senesce, and are environmental conditions experienced during development relevant to late‐life performance? We report a meta‐analysis of studies of wild populations to determine how the quality of the environment experienced during development affects rates of survival and reproductive senescence. From studies of 14 bird or mammal species, we calculated effect sizes for the interaction between the effects of environmental quality during development and age in predicting survival (N = 18) or reproduction (N = 30) over time in late life. We found no evidence that developmental environment affected rates of survival senescence (βmean = –1.2 × 10−4 ± 0.022SE). However, a better developmental environment was associated with slower rates of reproductive senescence in late life (βmean = 0.062 ± 0.023SE), indicating a small, but significant, “silver‐spoon” effect of early‐life conditions that persisted through to late life. Our results illustrate how the effects of environmental conditions during development can persist throughout life, and indicate one possible cause of phenotypic plasticity in senescence.
Highlights
Can the quality of the environment experienced during the first stage of life, the developmental period, have persistent effects that last into the final stage of life, affecting rates of senescence? Senescence, or the decline in reproduction or survival in old age, is common in both wild and domestic populations, but may vary substantially between individuals in a population for different environmental and genetic reasons
Across 14 species of birds and mammals, there was no evidence that developmental environment influenced survival senescence; there was a significant influence on reproductive senescence
Increasing numbers of longitudinal wild animal studies have demonstrated that variation in individual senescence rates even within populations is common in natural environments (Nussey et al 2013)
Summary
Can the quality of the environment experienced during the first stage of life, the developmental period, have persistent effects that last into the final stage of life, affecting rates of senescence? Senescence, or the decline in reproduction or survival in old age, is common in both wild and domestic populations, but may vary substantially between individuals in a population for different environmental and genetic reasons. Can the quality of the environment experienced during the first stage of life, the developmental period, have persistent effects that last into the final stage of life, affecting rates of senescence? Being exposed to a higher quality environment during the developmental period provided a “silver-spoon,” whereby individuals experienced slower declines in reproductive ability at the very last stage of their lives. Evolution Letters published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) and European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB). What determines how fast, or how slow, an individual will senesce?
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