Working Paper Review Version 1 This version is not peer-reviewed

Death Happy: Adaptive Ageing and Its Evolution by Kin Selection in Organisms with Colonial Ecology

Version 1 : Received: 3 August 2020 / Approved: 4 August 2020 / Online: 4 August 2020 (11:26:31 CEST)

How to cite: Gems, D.; Galimov, E. Death Happy: Adaptive Ageing and Its Evolution by Kin Selection in Organisms with Colonial Ecology . Preprints 2020, 2020080093 Gems, D.; Galimov, E. Death Happy: Adaptive Ageing and Its Evolution by Kin Selection in Organisms with Colonial Ecology . Preprints 2020, 2020080093

Abstract

Standard evolutionary theory, supported by mathematical modelling of outbred, dispersed populations predicts that ageing is not an adaptation. We recently argued that in clonal, viscous populations, programmed organismal death could promote fitness through social benefits and has, in some organisms (e.g. Caenorhabditis elegans), evolved to shorten lifespan. Here we review previous adaptive death theory, including consumer sacrifice, biomass sacrifice, and defensive sacrifice types of altruistic adaptive death. In addition we discuss possible adaptive death in semelparous fish, coevolution of reproductive and adaptive death, and adaptive reproductive senescence in C. elegans. We also describe findings from recent tests for the existence of adaptive death in C. elegans using computer modelling. Such models have provided new insights into how trade-offs between fitness at the individual and colony levels mean that senescent changes can be selected traits. Exploring further the relationship between adaptive death and social interactions, we consider examples where adaptive death results more from action of kin than from self-destructive mechanisms and, to describe this, introduce the term adaptive killing of kin.

Keywords

adaptive death; ageing; altruism; C. elegans; kin selection; salmon

Subject

Biology and Life Sciences, Aging

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