Robine Jean-Marie, Petersen Hans Christian, Jeune Bernard
INSERM, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, France.
Dan Medicinhist Arbog. 2008;36:97-108.
In 1749 Buffon proposed a general law for the longevity of species. In retrospect this law laid the foundation for modern studies of correlations between biological variables. Buffon refers to "la durée totale de la vie", the maximum lifespan, and claims that there is a systematic relationship between this variable and a measure of the growth period. It transpires that Buffon believed that by multiplying the age at the termination of the growth period by 7 one obtains the maximum lifespan. In vol III o the supplements to "Histoire Naturelle" he presents a table with, i.a., age at first reproduction and maximum lifespan for 31 Mammalian species, Furthermore, he claims that the growth period is equivalent to 2 times the age at first reproduction. From Buffon's data, one obtains a mean ratio of approximately 13 between maximum lifespan and age at first reproduction, where the expected ratio is 14 (2x7), i.e. very close to the observed ratio. Inspired by Buffon's proposition, we have investigated the same relationship in a modern dataset, comprising 564 Mammalian species. The best fitting statistical model for the relationship is not a simple multiplication, but an allometric equation: maximum lifespan = 11.47x(age at first reproduction)0.65. Taking into account the variation due to, i.a., phylogenetic constraints and adaptive divergence, Buffon's idea represents a basic biological relationship between life history characters.
1749年，布丰提出了一条关于物种寿命的普遍规律。回顾起来，这条规律为现代生物学变量之间相关性的研究奠定了基础。布丰提到的“生命的总时长”，即最大寿命，并声称这个变量与生长期的一个度量之间存在系统关系。原来布丰认为，将生长期结束时的年龄乘以7就能得到最大寿命。在《自然史》的第三卷补编中，他列出了一个表格，其中包括31种哺乳动物的首次繁殖年龄和最大寿命。此外，他声称生长期相当于首次繁殖年龄的2倍。根据布丰的数据，最大寿命与首次繁殖年龄之间的平均比率约为13，而预期比率是14（2×7），即与观察到的比率非常接近。受布丰这一观点的启发，我们在一个包含564种哺乳动物的现代数据集中研究了同样的关系。这种关系的最佳拟合统计模型不是简单的乘法，而是一个异速生长方程：最大寿命 = 11.47×（首次繁殖年龄）^0.65。考虑到诸如系统发育限制和适应性分化等因素导致的变异，布丰的观点代表了生命史特征之间的一种基本生物学关系。
