title: Lifespan divergence between social insect castes: challenges and opportunities for evolutionary theories of aging.
abstract: The extraordinarily long lifespans of queens (and kings) in eusocial insects and the strikingly large differences in life expectancy between workers and queens challenge our understanding of the evolution of aging and provide unique opportunities for studying the causes underlying adaptive variation in lifespan within species. Here we review the major evolutionary theories of aging, focusing on their scope and limitations when applied to social insects. We show that reproductive division of labor, interactions between kin, caste-specific gene regulation networks, and the integration of colony-level trade-offs with individual-level trade-offs provide challenges to the classical theories We briefly indicate how these challenges could be met in future models of adaptive phenotypic plasticity in lifespan between and within different castes.
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Research in Evolutionary Life Sciences, Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 7, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands. Electronic address: b.h.kramer@rug.nl.
authors.forename: Boris H
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Kramer
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Research in Evolutionary Life Sciences, Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 7, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: G Sander
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: van Doorn
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Research in Evolutionary Life Sciences, Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 7, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Franz J
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Weissing
authors.affiliation: Theoretical Research in Evolutionary Life Sciences, Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 7, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Ido
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Pen
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D007313:Insecta / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D008136:Longevity / Q000502:physiology*; D012098:Reproduction; D012919:Social Behavior