Collaborative Research: Evolution and Ecology of Aging in Natural Populations of Long-Lived Vertebrates

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Senescence is the increase in probability of death with advancing age. Commonly referred to as "aging", this increasing mortality with age is due to the deterioration of underlying physiological and biochemical processes. Different species of animals are wildly divergent in their lifespans and aging rates. To date, little is known of the evolutionary and ecological causes of such variation. By applying field studies, laboratory assays, and mathematical models to a well-documented natural system of snake populations that vary in aging rate, the causes of variation in aging and consequences for lifespan and health span will be learned. The answer to the question of how variation in aging rates is maintained in natural populations will aid in an understanding of the evolutionary history of aging in humans and other organisms and needs to be studied to develop a general theory of the evolution and persistence of aging that applies to all multicellular life. Through specifically targeting high school students and undergraduates of groups traditionally underrepresented in environmental biology, this research will directly support diversity in environmental biology and field ecology, as well as traditional laboratory experimentation. These studies on the mechanisms and prevalence of aging in nature, on an abundant and long-studied system, will yield insights into the relative importance of aging in population biology, the impacts of aging and age-structure on the population dynamics of imperiled species, and the aging process and changing age-structure of the human species.