title: Diet Shapes Mortality Response to Trauma in Old Tephritid Fruit Flies.
abstract: Despite the importance of trauma in healthspan and lifespan in humans as well as in non-human species, with one important exception the literature in both gerontology and ecology contains virtually no experimental demographic studies concerned with trauma in any species. We used dietary manipulation [full diet (F) versus sugar-only (S)] to produce four levels of frailty in 55-day old tephritid fruit flies (Anastrepha ludens) that were then subject to the trauma of cage transfer stress (n = 900/sex in each of the 4 treatments). The key results included the following: (1) there is a trauma effect caused by the transfer that depends on previous diet before transfer, new diet after transfer and gender of the fly; (2) males are more vulnerable than females; (3) if initial diet was F, flies are relatively immune against the trauma, and the subsequent diet (F or S) does not matter; (4) however if initial diet was S, then the effect of the trauma depends largely on the diet after the transfer; (5) flies transferred from S to F diets do very well in terms of remaining longevity (i.e. greatest remaining longevity), while flies transferred from S to S diet do poorly (i.e. shortest remaining longevity). We discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of this study and implications of the results.
authors.affiliation: Department of Entomology, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.|Center for the Economics and Demography of Aging, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: James R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Carey
authors.affiliation: El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR), Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico.
authors.forename: Pablo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Liedo
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Cong
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jane-Ling
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Hans-Georg
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.affiliation: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America.
authors.forename: Yu-Ru
authors.initials: YR
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Konrad-Zuse-Strasse 1, Rostock, Germany.
authors.forename: James W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Vaupel
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D031204:Caloric Restriction; D004032:Diet; D005260:Female; D005298:Fertility / Q000502:physiology; D008136:Longevity / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012737:Sex Factors; D013312:Stress, Physiological; D033621:Tephritidae / Q000502:physiology*