Jemielity Stephanie, Chapuisat Michel, Parker Joel D, Keller Laurent
Department of Ecology and Evolution, Biology Building, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne-Dorigny, Switzerland.
Age (Dordr). 2005 Sep;27(3):241-8. doi: 10.1007/s11357-005-2916-z. Epub 2005 Dec 31.
Aging is a fascinating, albeit controversial, chapter in biology. Few other subjects have elicited more than a century of ever-increasing scientific interest. In this review, we discuss studies on aging in social insects, a group of species that includes ants and termites, as well as certain bee and wasp species. One striking feature of social insects is the lifespan of queens (reproductive females), which can reach nearly 30 years in some ant species. This is over 100 times the average lifespan of solitary insects. Moreover, there is a tremendous variation in lifespan among castes, with queens living up to 500 times longer than males and 10 times longer than workers (non-reproductive individuals). This lifespan polymorphism has allowed researchers to test the evolutionary theory of aging and - more recently - to investigate the proximate causes of aging. The originality of these studies lies in their use of naturally evolved systems to address questions related to aging and lifespan determination that cannot be answered using the conventional model organisms.
衰老在生物学中是引人入胜却又颇具争议的一章。很少有其他主题能引发一个多世纪以来不断增长的科学兴趣。在这篇综述中，我们讨论关于群居昆虫衰老的研究，群居昆虫包括蚂蚁、白蚁以及某些蜜蜂和黄蜂物种。群居昆虫的一个显著特征是蚁后（有生殖能力的雌性）的寿命，在某些蚂蚁物种中，蚁后的寿命可达近30年。这是独居昆虫平均寿命的100多倍。此外，不同等级之间的寿命差异巨大，蚁后的寿命比雄性长500倍，比工蚁（无生殖能力的个体）长10倍。这种寿命多态性使研究人员能够检验衰老的进化理论，并且最近还能研究衰老的直接原因。这些研究的独特之处在于它们利用自然进化的系统来解决与衰老和寿命决定相关的问题，而这些问题是使用传统模式生物无法回答的。
