Everything ages. With increasing age, we undergo physiological decline, meaning we are more likely to die, and less likely to reproduce. This is ‘senescence’. Everything ages, but not everything senesces. Recent research shows that some organisms show constant or even increasing survival and fertility with age.
How did such diverse aging evolve? The ‘fittest’ life histories should have highest population growth, but there’s more than one way to achieve this. Different types of aging may be adaptations to different environments, through different population dynamics.
The WHYAGE project tackles these questions using comparative demography. The empirical part of the project uses demographic data of thousands of species (www.compadre-db.org), to measure aging across the tree of life and relate this to population dynamics. The theoretical part of the project simulates different environments and tests the evolutionary fitness of different aging strategies in each. The methods part of the project develops new approaches and software to achieve these aims.
Grant Provider: EU MSCA
Total Amount of Grant: 1.491.451 DKR (200.194,8 EURO)
Period: 1/5 17 – 30/4 19