A demographic and evolutionary analysis of maternal effect senescence
Christina M. Hernández, Silke F. van Daalen, Hal Caswell, Michael G. Neubert, Kristin E. Gribble
Abstract
and that this decrease arises primarily through reduced fertility, particularly at maternal ages corresponding to peak reproductive output. We also used the models to estimate selection gradients, which measure the strength of selection, in both high growth rate (laboratory) and two simulated low growth rate environments. In all environments, selection gradients on survival and fertility decrease with increasing age. They also decrease with increasing maternal age for late maternal ages, implying that maternal effect senescence can evolve through the same process as in Hamilton's theory of the evolution of age-related senescence. The models we developed are widely applicable to evaluate the fitness consequences of maternal effect senescence across species with diverse aging and fertility schedule phenotypes.