Between the 1930s and 50s, evolutionary biologists developed a successful theory of why
organisms age, firmly rooted in population genetic principles. By the 1980s the evolution of …

Life-history traits or “fitness components”—such as age and size at maturity, fecundity and
fertility, age-specific rates of survival, and life span—are the major phenotypic determinants …

The search for the alleles that matter, the quantitative trait nucleotides (QTNs) that underlie
heritable variation within populations and divergence among them, is a popular pursuit. But …

Abstract Naked mole rats (NMRs; Heterocephalus glaber) are the longest-living rodents
known, with a maximum lifespan of 30 years—5 times longer than expected on the basis of …

Seasonal environmental heterogeneity is cyclic, persistent and geographically widespread.
In species that reproduce multiple times annually, environmental changes across seasonal …

Between the 1930s and 1950s, scientists developed key principles of population genetics to
try and explain the aging process. Almost a century later, these aging theories, including …

Most organisms exhibit senescence; a decline in physiological function with age. In nature,
rates of senescence vary extensively among individuals and this variation has a significant …

Aging or senescence is an age-dependent decline in physiological function,
demographically manifest as decreased survival and fecundity with increasing age. Since …

Lifespan is a complex quantitative trait involving genetic and non-genetic factors as well as
the peculiarities of ontogenesis. As with all quantitative traits, lifespan shows considerable …

Finding the specific nucleotides that underlie adaptive variation is a major goal in
evolutionary biology, but polygenic traits pose a challenge because the complex genotype …