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Mortality plateaus and directionality theory.

L Demetrius1

  • 1Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.

Proceedings. Biological Sciences
|September 26, 2001
PubMed
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Mortality rates leveling off in old age challenge traditional evolutionary theories. Directionality theory, using evolutionary entropy, explains these mortality plateaus and suggests age-dependent selection intensity.

Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Gerontology
  • Population Genetics

Background:

  • Empirical studies show mortality rates plateau in advanced ages for humans and animals.
  • This contradicts traditional evolutionary senescence theories relying on the Malthusian parameter for fitness.
  • Existing models fail to reconcile observed mortality patterns with evolutionary principles.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To analyze mortality plateaus using directionality theory, a novel evolutionary model.
  • To investigate the role of evolutionary entropy as a measure of fitness.
  • To predict evolutionarily stable mortality patterns under bounded growth.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of mortality incidence within the framework of directionality theory.
  • Mathematical modeling of selection intensity as a function of age.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Application of evolutionary entropy as the fitness metric.

    • Main Results:

    • Selection intensity is demonstrated to be a convex function of age under directionality theory.
    • This property predicts that mortality rates will abate at extreme ages in populations with bounded growth.
    • Directionality theory provides a robust explanation for observed mortality plateaus.

    Conclusions:

    • Directionality theory successfully explains mortality plateaus, overcoming limitations of the Malthusian model.
    • Evolutionary entropy is proposed as the operationally valid measure of Darwinian fitness.
    • The findings support a paradigm shift in understanding the evolutionary basis of aging and mortality.