Title
The long lives of primates and the ‘invariant rate of ageing’ hypothesis
Author(s)
Colchero, Fernando;Aburto, José Manuel;Archie, Elizabeth A.;Boesch, Christophe;Breuer, Thomas;Campos, Fernando A.;Collins, Anthony;Conde, Dalia A.;Cords, Marina;Crockford, Catherine;Thompson, Melissa Emery;Fedigan, Linda M.;Fichtel, Claudia;Groenenberg, Milou;Hobaiter, Catherine;Kappeler, Peter M.;Lawler, Richard R.;Lewis, Rebecca J.;Machanda, Zarin P.;Manguette, Marie L.;Muller, Martin N.;Packer, Craig;Parnell, Richard J.;Perry, Susan;Pusey, Anne E.;Robbins, Martha M.;Seyfarth, Robert M.;Silk, Joan B.;Staerk, Johanna;Stoinski, Tara S.;Stokes, Emma J.;Strier, Karen B.;Strum, Shirley C.;Tung, Jenny;Villavicencio, Francisco;Wittig, Roman M.;Wrangham, Richard W.;Zuberbühler, Klaus;Vaupel, James W.;Alberts, Susan C.
Published
2021
Publisher
Nature Communications
Abstract
Is it possible to slow the rate of ageing, or do biological constraints limit its plasticity? We test the ‘invariant rate of ageing’ hypothesis, which posits that the rate of ageing is relatively fixed within species, with a collection of 39 human and nonhuman primate datasets across seven genera. We first recapitulate, in nonhuman primates, the highly regular relationship between life expectancy and lifespan equality seen in humans. We next demonstrate that variation in the rate of ageing within genera is orders of magnitude smaller than variation in pre-adult and age-independent mortality. Finally, we demonstrate that changes in the rate of ageing, but not other mortality parameters, produce striking, species-atypical changes in mortality patterns. Our results support the invariant rate of ageing hypothesis, implying biological constraints on how much the human rate of ageing can be slowed.
Keywords
ageing; evolutionary theory; population dynamics

Access Full Text

A full-text copy of this article may be available. Please email the WCS Library to request.



Back

PUB26485