Jacques Deere

Oct 1, 2024 | besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Jacques Deere |Penelope Holland |Aziz A. Aboobaker |Roberto Salguero-Gómez

1 INTRODUCTION A hydra [a potentially immortal metazoan (Martı́nez, 1998)] walks out of a bar … and is run over by a bus. Nothing lasts forever, including potential immortality. How age impacts individual performance and fitness has received much attention (Baudisch, 2011; Baudisch & Stott, 2019; Caswell & Salguero-Gómez, 2013; Kirkwood, 1977; Medvedev, 1990; Vaupel, 2010).

Jun 20, 2024 | biorxiv.org | Jacques Deere |Penelope Holland |Aziz A. Aboobaker |Roberto Salguero-Gómez

AbstractPotential immortality is observed in several species (e.g., prickly pear cactus, hydra, flatworms) and is indicative of their negligible or even negative senescence rates. Unlike in senescent species, which experience reduced individual performance with age due to physiological degradation, species with negligible or negative senescence display mortality rates that remain constant or decline with age, respectively. These rates vary across taxa and are correlated with life history traits.