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Surveying Low-Cost Methods to Measure Lifespan and Healthspan in Caenorhabditis elegans

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Published on: May 18, 2022

Increased longevity evolves from grandmothering.

Peter S Kim¹, James E Coxworth, Kristen Hawkes

¹School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney, F07 Carslaw Building, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.

Proceedings. Biological Sciences

|October 26, 2012

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Grandmother effects, where postmenopausal women support their daughters by caring for grandchildren, significantly increased human lifespan. This simulation shows how grandmothering alone doubled human life spans in under 60,000 years.

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Area of Science:

Evolutionary biology
Anthropology
Demography

Background:

The evolution of postmenopausal longevity in humans is a significant area of study.
The grandmother hypothesis suggests ancestral grandmothers aided their daughters' fertility by provisioning grandchildren.
This hypothesis has lacked substantial mathematical modeling until the present study.

Purpose of the Study:

To provide mathematical support for the grandmother hypothesis.
To simulate how grandmother effects could influence human lifespan evolution.
To explore the impact of specific assumptions on lifespan increase.

Main Methods:

Formal simulation modeling was employed.
The model incorporated specific assumptions about grandmother eligibility (post-fertile females) and care (oldest juveniles, no infant subsidy).
Life spans were compared to those of modern chimpanzees and evolved human ranges.

Main Results:

Simulations demonstrated that grandmother effects alone can drive a significant increase in lifespan.
Life spans evolved from chimpanzee-like ranges to modern human ranges.
The doubling of human life spans was achieved in less than sixty thousand years under the model's conditions.

Conclusions:

Grandmother effects are a sufficient mechanism to explain the evolution of extended human longevity.
The presence and actions of postmenopausal females significantly impacted reproductive success and lifespan in ancestral human populations.
This study provides a quantitative framework for understanding a key factor in human evolutionary biology.