Several social dimensions including social integration, status, early-life adversity, and their interactions across the life course can predict health, reproduction, and mortality in humans. Accordingly, the social environment plays a fundamental role in the emergence of phenotypes driving the evolution of aging. Recent work placing human social gradients on a biological continuum with other species provides a useful evolutionary context for aging questions, but there is still a need for a unified evolutionary framework linking health and aging within
social contexts. Here, we summarize current challenges to understand the role of the social environment in human life courses. Next, we review recent advances in comparative biodemography and propose a biodemographic perspective to address socially driven health phenotype distributions and their evolutionary consequences using a nonhuman primate population. This new comparative approach uses evolutionary demography to address the joint dynamics of populations, social dimensions, phenotypes, and life history parameters.
The long-term goal is to advance our understanding of the link between individual social environments, population-level outcomes, and the evolution of aging.
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Comparative analysis of animal lifespan
Comparative studies of aging are a promising approach to identifying general properties of and processes leading to aging. While to date, many comparative studies of aging in animals have focused on relatively narrow species groups, methodological innovations now allow for studies that include evolutionary distant species. However, comparative studies of aging across a wide range of species that have distinct life histories introduce additional challenges in experimental design. Here, we discuss these challenges, highlight the most pressing problems that need to be solved, and provide suggestions based on current approaches to successfully carry out comparative aging studies across the animal kingdom.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 2213824
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10471149
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- GeroScience
- Volume:
- 46
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2509-2723
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 171-181
- Size(s):
- p. 171-181
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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