Mueller L D, Rose M R
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine 92697, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1996 Dec 24;93(26):15249-53. doi: 10.1073/pnas.93.26.15249.
Most demographic data indicate a roughly exponential increase in adult mortality with age, a phenomenon that has been explained in terms of a decline in the force of natural selection acting on age-specific mortality. Scattered demographic findings suggest the existence of a late-life mortality plateau in both humans and dipteran insects, seemingly at odds with both prior data and evolutionary theory. Extensions to the evolutionary theory of aging are developed which indicate that such late-life mortality plateaus are to be expected when enough late-life data are collected. This expanded theory predicts late-life mortality plateaus, with both antagonistic pleiotropy and mutation accumulation as driving population genetic mechanisms.
大多数人口统计学数据表明,成年死亡率随年龄大致呈指数增长,这一现象已根据作用于特定年龄死亡率的自然选择力下降来解释。零散的人口统计学研究结果表明,人类和双翅目昆虫都存在晚年死亡率平稳期,这似乎与先前的数据和进化理论都不一致。对衰老进化理论进行了拓展,结果表明,当收集到足够多的晚年数据时,这种晚年死亡率平稳期是可以预期的。这一扩展理论预测了晚年死亡率平稳期,其中拮抗多效性和突变积累是推动种群遗传机制。