Title
The evolutionary landscape of primate longevity
Author(s)
Fernando Colchero;José Aburto;Elizabeth Archie;Christophe Boesch;Thomas Breuer;Fernando Campos;Anthony Collins;Dalia Conde;Marina Cords;Catherine Crockford;Melissa Emery Thompson;Linda Fedigan;Claudia Fichtel;Milou Groenenberg;Catherine Hobaiter;Peter Kappeler;Richard Lawler;Rebecca Lewis;Zarin Machanda;Marie Manguette;Martin Muller;Craig Packer;Richard Parnell;Susan Perry;Anne Pusey;Martha Robbins;Robert Seyfarth;Joan Silk;Johanna Staerk;Tara Stoinski;Emma Stokes;Karen Strier;Shirley Strum;Jenny Tung;Francisco Villavicencio;Roman Wittig;Richard Wrangham;Klaus Zuberbühler;James Vaupel;Susan Alberts
Published
Preprint
Publisher
Nature Research
Abstract
Is it possible to slow the rate of aging, or do biological constraints limit its plasticity? We test this ‘invariant rate of aging’ hypothesis with an unprecedented 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 aging 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 aging, but not other mortality parameters, produce striking, species-atypical changes in mortality patterns. Our results support the invariant rate of aging hypothesis, implying biological constraints on how much the human rate of aging can be slowed.
Keywords
aging; longevity; primate
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PUB25575