Peter Lidsky did an interesting post yesterday about Semelparity
https://www.twitter.com/LidskyPeter/status/1889506241334116405
I tried to embed it, but the forum no longer automatically embeds tweets and won’t handle twitter embedding script. Blogger does handle embedded tweets, however. (which can be seen on my post)
I have updated my own post on programmed aging to reflect this:
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Talking further about these creatures they appear to be creatures that go through a reproductive episode and then start accelerated aging as a result of cortisol levels going up. That is really interesting.
Actually I have read more into this. The female Kalutas live for about 4 years, but the males survive only one breeding season. Their testes shrivel up just before the breeding season and they aim to fertilise as many females as possible. The females store the semen and end up having litters with more than one male’s semen.
Still it is curious to have females living 4 times as long as males.
The theory that Peter Lidsky supports seems extremely interesting to me. From what I understand, he maintains that semelparity is an accelerated aging and that this is programmed as an evolutionary strategy for the control of pathogens.
The last few days I have been reviewing more about this and I find it extremely convincing.
I think Peter Lidsky has some interesting ideas.
On the broader issue of whether aging is programmed or not I wrote a post recently.
We cannot get away from the fact that different species have different average lifespans. Hence one has to accept that there is something genetic about the lifespan.
I don’t think control of pathogens is the only reason for controlling lifespan, but I think it is one reason even if not the major one.
