Chapter Sixty - 2020: Evolutionary adaptation to diet and its impact on healthspan

Abstract

The work led by L.D. Mueller pointed out that a general corollary of Hamiltonian theories of aging based on the fall in the forces of natural selection with adult age is that adaptation to a sustained environmental change should be age-dependent, with later adult ages adapting to the environmental change at a much slower rate. G.A. Rutledge tested this hypothesis using Drosophila populations cultured at different ages while undergoing adaptation to a laboratory environment for hundreds of generations. As expected from Hamiltonian theory, populations that were only cultured at early ages had worse adaptation to the lab environment compared to populations that were cultured at later ages.