Reproduction has immediate effects on female mortality, but no discernible lasting physiological impacts: A test of the disposable soma theory

Significance The dominant evolutionary theory about why animals age and die is the disposable soma theory (DST). This posits that during reproduction, individuals are forced to trade-off allocation of resources between the reproductive event and somatic maintenance. This leads to the prediction that investments in reproduction should lead to greater somatic damage and shortened lifespan. We tested this idea using mice and showed that while reproduction did increase the immediate risks of mortality, there were no long-lasting impacts on survival once breeding ended. These data question the foundation of the DST.

• Publication year

  2024

• Venue

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

• Publication date

  2024-10-07

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1073/pnas.2408682121PMID 39374394PMCID 11494338
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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