Stochastic and statistical models in the biodemography of aging

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New developments in the science of aging have struck a bridge between demography and population biology.  On the one side we have the exploration and cataloguing of vital statistics in human populations, on the other we have observational and experimental studies of growth and life-histories in nonhuman species.  In this new field of "biodemography", the demographers have expanded their scope beyond our own species, and assimilated the evolutionary theory of life histories.  The biologists, for their part, have adopted both the quantitative techniques of demography, and the concern with measuring survival in large populations. The repercussions for the study of aging, in particular, have been momentous. Biodemography today is in flux, as empirical data collide with time-honoured mathematical models. This project will advance the mathematical biology of biodemography, formulating and analysing new models, and extend the statistical methods for linking the models to data.  The modelling serves to translate between specific instances and general structures,  to provide context for the interpretation of experimental findings, and to guide new experiments. Some goals of this project are purely mathematical, including the development of a new model for explaining the evolution of tiny age-specific mutations that some believe are the root cause of aging.  Other goals are data analysis, such as the collaboration with fruit fly and nematode laboratories in California to quantify the changes in behaviour of those organisms with age.  Many components of the project straddle this divide, such as the collaboration with researchers collecting new data on sex-ratio and social support in humans and other species.  Here the goal is to develop new mathematical models which do justice to the data, and help to clarify the role of social support in the evolution of aging.