{"id":115,"date":"2013-07-01T12:29:42","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T12:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshmitteldorf.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=115"},"modified":"2016-05-11T20:00:19","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T20:00:19","slug":"the-demographic-theory-of-aging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2013\/07\/01\/the-demographic-theory-of-aging\/","title":{"rendered":"The Demographic Theory of Aging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aging destroys fitness. \u00a0How could aging have evolved? \u00a0Below is my answer to this question. \u00a0This is mainstream science from peer-reviewed journals <\/em>[Ref 1<\/a>, Ref 2<\/a>, Ref 3<\/a>]\u00a0, but it is my<\/strong> science, and as Richard Feynman warned us*, I\u2019m the last one who can be objective about the merits of this theory.<\/em><\/p>\n

Too fit for its own good<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1874, a swarm of Rocky Mountain Locusts descended on the American midwest. They covered the sky and shadowed the earth underneath for hundreds of miles. A single cloud was larger than the state of California. Once on the ground, they ate everything that was green, leaving behind a dust bowl. The earth was thick with egg masses, ready to renew the plague the following year.<\/p>\n

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote in her childhood memoir<\/a>\u00a0(in the third person)<\/p>\n

Huge brown grasshoppers were hitting the ground all around her, hitting her head and her face and her arms. They came thudding down like hail. The cloud was hailing grasshoppers. The cloud was grasshoppers. Their bodies hid the sun and made darkness. Their thin, large wings gleamed and glittered. The rasping, whirring of their wings filled the whole air and they hit the ground and the house with the noise of a hailstorm. Laura tried to beat them off. Their claws clung to her skin and her dress. They looked at her with bulging eyes, turning their heads this way and that. Mary ran screaming into the house. Grasshoppers covered the ground, there was not one bare bit to step on. Laura had to step on grasshoppers and they smashed squirming and slimy under her feet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The locusts returned in several more seasons, but the last reported sighting of a Rocky Mountain locust was in 1902<\/a>. There are preserved specimens in museums and laboratories today, but no living locusts. Entomologists interested in the locust\u2019s rise and fall travel to the glaciers of Wyoming, mining hundred-year-old ice for carcasses that they might study.<\/p>\n

Where did they go? \u00a0The Rocky Mountain Locust drove itself to extinction by overshooting its sustainable population.<\/p>\n

Every animal species is part of a food web, and depends on an ecosystem to survive. If the ecosystem collapses, it takes down every species and every individual with it. Because of their mobility, the locusts were able to devastate many ecosystems, denuding one landscape, then flying hundreds of miles to deposit their children in a fresh location. \u00a0Animals that can\u2019t fly become victims of their own greed much more quickly than the locust. If the lions killed every gazelle on the Serengeti, how long would it be before the lions were gone, too?<\/p>\n

Evolution of Individuals and Groups<\/strong><\/p>\n

How would an evolutionary biologist describe this situation? Were the locusts too fit for their own good? To capture this story, you have to distinguish between individual fitness and collective fitness. Individually, these locusts were super-competitors. Collectively, they were a circular firing squad. \u00a0The science of individual fitness and collective fitness is called Multi-level Selection Theory<\/a>, and it has been spearheaded by David S Wilson<\/a>\u00a0of Binghamton University, based on theoretical foundations by\u00a0George Price<\/a>. \u00a0MLS is regarded with suspicion by most evolutionary biologists, but embraced by a minority as sound science.<\/p>\n

Selfish organisms that consume as much of the available food species as possible may thrive for a time. They may crowd out other individuals of the same species that compete less aggressively. \u00a0But as soon as their kind grows to be the majority, they are doomed \u2013 they wipe out the food source on which their children depend.<\/p>\n

Animals are evolved to be \u201cprudent predators\u201d\u2020. \u00a0Species that have exploited their food sources too aggressively, or that have reproduced too fast have become extinct in a series of local population crashes. \u00a0These extinctions have been a potent force of natural selection, counterbalancing the better-known selective pressure toward ever faster and more prolific reproduction.<\/p>\n

How did Evolutionary Theory go Wrong?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is an idea that has common-sense appeal to anyone who thinks logically and practically about evolutionary science. In order not to to appreciate this idea, you need years of training in the mathematical science of evolutionary genetics.\u00a0Evolutionary genetics<\/a>\u00a0is an axiomatic framework, built up logically from postulates that sound reasonable, but the conclusions to which they lead are deeply at odds with the biological world we see. This is the “selfish gene” theory<\/a>\u00a0that says all cooperation in nature is a sort of illusion, based on a gene\u2019s tendency to encourage behaviors that promote the welfare of other copies of the same gene in closely-related individuals.<\/p>\n

The \u201cselfish gene\u201d is an idea that should have been rejected long ago, as absurd on its face. Yes, there is plenty of selfishness and aggression in nature. \u00a0But nature is also rich with examples of cooperation between unrelated individuals, and even cooperation across species lines, which is called \u201cco-evolution\u201d. \u00a0Species become intimately adapted to depend on tiny details of the other\u2019s shape or habits or chemistry. \u00a0Examples of this are everywhere, from the bacteria in your gut to the flowers and the honeybees. \u00a0In the same way, predators and their prey (I\u2019m using this word to include plant as well as animal food sources) adapt to be able to co-exist for the long haul. \u00a0It is obvious to every naturalist that there is a temperance in nature\u2019s communities, that when ecosystems are out of balance they don\u2019t last very long.<\/p>\n

It makes good scientific sense that extinctions from overpopulation are a powerful evolutionary force, and it is part of Darwin’s legacy<\/a>\u00a0as well. Natural selection is more than merely a race among individuals to reproduce the fastest. The very word \u201cfitness\u201d came from an ability to fit well into the life of the local community.<\/p>\n

But beginning some forty years after Darwin\u2019s death, mathematical thinking has led the evolutionary theorists astray. They have forgotten the first principle of science, which is that every theory must be validated by comparing predictions from the theory to the world we see around us. Predictions of the selfish gene theory work well in the genetics lab, but as a description of nature, they fail spectacularly.<\/p>\n

Understanding Aging based on Multi-level Selection<\/strong><\/p>\n

If we are willing to look past the \u201cselfish gene\u201d and embrace the science of multi-level selection, we can understand aging as a tribute paid by the individual in support of the ecosystem. \u00a0If it weren\u2019t for aging, the only way that individuals would die would be by starvation, by diseases, and by predation. \u00a0All three of these tend to be \u201cclumpy\u201d \u2013 that is to say that either no one is dying or everyone is dying at once. Until food species are exhausted, there is no starvation; but then there is a famine, and everyone dies at once. If a disease strikes a community in which everyone is at the peak of their immunological fitness, then either everyone can fend it off, or else everyone dies in an epidemic. \u00a0And without aging, even death by predation would be very clumpy. \u00a0Many large predators are just fast enough to catch the aging, crippled prey individuals. \u00a0If this were not so, then either all the prey would be vulnerable to predators, or none of them would be. \u00a0There could be no lasting balance between predators and prey.<\/p>\n

Aging helps to level the death rate in good times and bad. Without aging, horde dynamics would prevail, as deaths would occur primarily in famines and epidemics. Population would swing wildly up and down. With aging comes the possibility of predictable life spans and death rates that don\u2019t alternately soar and plummet. \u00a0Ecosystems can have some stability and some persistence.<\/p>\n

Aging is plastic, providing further support for ecosystem stability<\/strong><\/p>\n

This would be true even if aging operated on a fixed schedule; but natural selection has created an adaptive aging clock, which further enhances the stabilizing effect. When there is a famine and many animals are dying of starvation, the death rate from old age is down, because of the Caloric Restriction effect. \u00a0In times of famine and other environmental stress, the death rate from aging actually takes a vacation, because animals become hardier and age more slowly.<\/p>\n

When we ask \u201cWhy does an animal live longer when it is starving?\u201d the answer is, of course, that the ability to last out a famine<\/a>\u00a0and re-seed the population when food once again becomes plentiful provides a great selective advantage. \u00a0This may sound like it is an adaptation for individual survival, consistent with the selfish gene. \u00a0But we might ask the same question conversely: \u201cWhy does an animal have a shorter life span when there is plenty to eat?\u201d When we look at it this way, it is clear that tying aging to food cannot \u00a0be explained in terms of the selfish gene. \u00a0In order to be able to live longer under conditions of starvation, animals must be genetically programmed to hold some fitness in reserve when they have plenty to eat, and this offers an advantage only to the community, not to the individual.<\/p>\n

Hormesis<\/a>\u00a0is an important clue concerning the evolutionary meaning of aging. This word refers to the fact that when an individual is in a challenging environment, its metabolism doesn\u2019t just compensate to mitigate the damage, but it overcompensates. It becomes so much stronger that it lives longer with challenge than without. The best-known example is that people (and animals) live longer when they\u2019re underfed than when they\u2019re overfed. We also know that exercise tends to increase our life expectancy, despite the fact that exercise generates copious free radicals (ROS) that ought to be pro-aging in their effect.<\/p>\n

Without aging, it is difficult for nature to put together a stable ecosystem. Populations are either rising exponentially or collapsing to zero. With aging, it becomes possible to balance birth and death rates, and population growth and subsequent crashes are tamed sufficiently that ecosystems may persist. \u00a0This is the evolutionary meaning of aging: \u00a0Aging is a group-selected adaptation for the purpose of damping the wild swings in death rate to which natural populations are prone. \u00a0Aging helps to make possible stable ecosystems.<\/p>\n

___________<\/p>\n

\u201c The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.\u201d – R P Feynman<\/a> (from the Galileo Symposium, 1964)<\/p>\n

\u2020 Here \u201cpredator\u201d can mean herbivore as well as carnivore. \u00a0This is the common usage in ecology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aging destroys fitness. \u00a0How could aging have evolved? \u00a0Below is my answer to this question. \u00a0This is mainstream science from peer-reviewed journals [Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3]\u00a0, but it is my science, and as Richard Feynman warned us*, I\u2019m the last one who can be objective about the merits of this theory. Too fit … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Demographic Theory of Aging - Josh Mitteldorf<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2013\/07\/01\/the-demographic-theory-of-aging\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Demographic Theory of Aging\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Aging destroys fitness. \u00a0How could aging have evolved? \u00a0Below is my answer to this question. \u00a0This is mainstream science from peer-reviewed journals [Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3]\u00a0, but it is my science, and as Richard Feynman warned us*, I\u2019m the last one who can be objective about the merits of this theory. 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The surprising fact that our bodies are genetically programmed to age and to die offers an enormous opportunity for medical intervention. It may be that therapies to slow the progress of aging need not repair or regenerate anything, but only need to interfere with an existing program of self-destruction. Mitteldorf has taught a weekly yoga class for thirty years. He is an advocate for vigorous self care, including exercise, meditation and caloric restriction. After earning a PhD in astrophysicist, Mitteldorf moved to evolutionary biology as a primary field in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, Berkeley, Bryn Mawr, LaSalle and Temple University. He is presently affiliated with MIT as a visiting scholar. In private life, Mitteldorf is an advocate for election integrity as well as public health. He is an avid amateur musician, playing piano in chamber groups, French horn in community orchestras. His two daughters are among the first children adopted from China in the mid-1980s. Much to the surprise of evolutionary biologists, genetic experiments indicate that aging has been selected as an adaptation for its own sake. This poses a conundrum: the impact of aging on individual fitness is wholly negative, so aging must be regarded as a kind of evolutionary altruism. Unlike other forms of evolutionary altruism, aging offers benefits to the community that are weak, and not well focussed on near kin of the altruist. This makes the mechanism challenging to understand and to model. more at http:\\\/\\\/mathforum.org\\\/~josh\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/AgingAdvice.org\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/scienceblog.com\\\/joshmitteldorf\\\/author\\\/joshmitteldorf\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Demographic Theory of Aging - Josh Mitteldorf","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/2013\/07\/01\/the-demographic-theory-of-aging\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Demographic Theory of Aging","og_description":"Aging destroys fitness. \u00a0How could aging have evolved? \u00a0Below is my answer to this question. \u00a0This is mainstream science from peer-reviewed journals [Ref 1, Ref 2, Ref 3]\u00a0, but it is my science, and as Richard Feynman warned us*, I\u2019m the last one who can be objective about the merits of this theory. 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The surprising fact that our bodies are genetically programmed to age and to die offers an enormous opportunity for medical intervention. It may be that therapies to slow the progress of aging need not repair or regenerate anything, but only need to interfere with an existing program of self-destruction. Mitteldorf has taught a weekly yoga class for thirty years. He is an advocate for vigorous self care, including exercise, meditation and caloric restriction. After earning a PhD in astrophysicist, Mitteldorf moved to evolutionary biology as a primary field in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, Berkeley, Bryn Mawr, LaSalle and Temple University. He is presently affiliated with MIT as a visiting scholar. In private life, Mitteldorf is an advocate for election integrity as well as public health. He is an avid amateur musician, playing piano in chamber groups, French horn in community orchestras. His two daughters are among the first children adopted from China in the mid-1980s. Much to the surprise of evolutionary biologists, genetic experiments indicate that aging has been selected as an adaptation for its own sake. This poses a conundrum: the impact of aging on individual fitness is wholly negative, so aging must be regarded as a kind of evolutionary altruism. Unlike other forms of evolutionary altruism, aging offers benefits to the community that are weak, and not well focussed on near kin of the altruist. This makes the mechanism challenging to understand and to model. more at http:\/\/mathforum.org\/~josh","sameAs":["http:\/\/AgingAdvice.org"],"url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/author\/joshmitteldorf\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgtN8h-1R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/joshmitteldorf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}