Abstract
Aging: an evolutionarily derived condition.
Highlights
Rose et al (2012) communicates the importance of understanding aging in the context of Hamilton’s forces of natural selection
Late life is a period in which mortality, fecundity, and virility all plateau. This raises an obvious question about what happens to the constituent physiological mechanism of individuals as they transition from a period of deteriorating fitness characters to a period of stable fitness characters
I collected mortality data, which I used to estimate the age of onset of the mortality rate plateau, which is relatively early in adult life in these populations (Shahrestani et al, 2012a)
Summary
Rose et al (2012) communicates the importance of understanding aging in the context of Hamilton’s forces of natural selection. We should instead understand aging as an evolutionarily derived condition, dependent entirely on the pattern of the force of natural selection. There appears to be no aging in the absence of a steady decline in the forces of natural selection acting on mortality and reproduction.
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