title: Dietary restriction increases variability in longevity.
abstract: Nutritional environments, particularly those experienced during early life, are hypothesized to affect longevity. A recent cross-taxa meta-analysis found that, depending upon circumstance, average longevity may be increased or decreased by early-life dietary restriction. Unstudied are the effects of diet during development on among-individual variance in longevity. Here, we address this issue using emerging methods for meta-analysis of variance. We found that, in general, standard deviation (s.d.) in longevity is around 8% higher under early-life dietary restriction than a standard diet. The effects became especially profound when dietary insults were experienced prenatally (s.d. increased by 29%) and/or extended into adulthood (s.d. increased by 36.6%). Early-life dietary restriction may generate variance in longevity as a result of increased variance in resource acquisition or allocation, but the mechanisms underlying these largely overlooked patterns clearly warrant elucidation.
authors.affiliation: Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia alistair.senior@sydney.edu.au.|School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: A M
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-9805-7280
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Senior
authors.affiliation: Evolution and Ecology Research Centre and School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia.
authors.forename: S
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-7765-5182
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nakagawa
authors.affiliation: Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.|School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Raubenheimer
authors.affiliation: Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.|School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: S J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Simpson
authors.affiliation: Evolution and Ecology Research Centre and School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2052, Australia.
authors.forename: D W A
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-9460-8743
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Noble
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D031204:Caloric Restriction; D005260:Female; D008018:Life Cycle Stages / Q000502:physiology; D008136:Longevity / Q000502:physiology*; D011247:Pregnancy; D039401:Prenatal Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D013045:Species Specificity
keywords: caloric restriction; early development; lifespan; meta-analysis; nutrition; variance