Between the 1930s and 50s, evolutionary biologists developed a successful theory of why
organisms age, firmly rooted in population genetic principles. By the 1980s the evolution of …

Highlights•In most organisms reproduction trades off with somatic maintenance and
survival.•The reproduction-maintenance trade-off is mediated by an endocrine network.•In …

Social insects are emerging models to study how gene regulation affects behavior because
their colonies comprise individuals with the same genomes but greatly different behavioral …

With their long lives and extreme reproductive output, social insect queens have escaped
the classic trade-off between fecundity and lifespan, but evidence for a trade-off between …

Social insects are promising new models in aging research. Within single colonies, longevity
differences of several magnitudes exist that can be found elsewhere only between different …

A key hypothesis for the occurrence of senescence is the decrease in selection strength due
to the decrease in the proportion of newborns from parents attaining an advanced age–the …

Eusocial insects provide special opportunities to elucidate the evolution of ageing as
queens have apparently evaded costs of reproduction and reversed the fecundity–longevity …

Kings and queens of eusocial termites can live for decades, while queens sustain a nearly
maximal fertility. To investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying their long lifespan, we …

Background Circadian clocks allow organisms to anticipate daily fluctuations in their
environment by driving rhythms in physiology and behavior. Inter-organismal differences in …

The evolution of sociality in insects caused a divergence in lifespan between reproductive
and non-reproductive castes. Ant queens can live for decades, while most workers survive …