title: Programed Death is Favored by Natural Selection in Spatial Systems.
abstract: Standard evolutionary theories of aging and mortality, implicitly based on mean-field assumptions, hold that programed mortality is untenable, as it opposes direct individual benefit. We show that in spatial models with local reproduction, programed deaths instead robustly result in long-term benefit to a lineage, by reducing local environmental resource depletion via spatiotemporal patterns causing feedback over many generations. Results are robust to model variations, implying that direct selection for shorter life span may be quite widespread in nature.
authors.affiliation: New England Complex Systems Institute, 210 Broadway, Suite 101, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.|Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.|Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
authors.forename: Justin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Werfel
authors.affiliation: Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.|Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.|School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
authors.forename: Donald E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Ingber
authors.affiliation: New England Complex Systems Institute, 210 Broadway, Suite 101, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Yaneer
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bar-Yam
mesh_terms: D008136:Longevity / Q000235:genetics*; D008957:Models, Genetic; D012641:Selection, Genetic; D013269:Stochastic Processes