Nature<\/a> this week. The study compares the aging patterns of humans and 45 other species.<\/p>\n\u201cWe all have preconceived notions about aging and what it should be like,\u201d said Pedro F. Quintana-Ascencio, a biologist at the University of Central Florida and one of the contributors to the study led by evolutionary biologist Owen Jones at the Max-Planck Odense Center at the University of Southern Denmark. \u201cBut this study shows we really need to look at the aging process in more depth. All is not what it appears across species. Humans, especially modern humans, appear to be outliers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team contrasted how vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and a green alga age. \u00a0Modern day people, frogs, lions, lice and the Hypericum cumulicola, a native Florida plant, were among the species compared.<\/p>\n
The study found that mortality of some species, like humans and birds, increased with age. For some, such as Florida\u2019s hypericum the increase is slower. And for others, like the desert tortoise and certain trees, mortality declines with age.<\/p>\n
Other researchers on the project were from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, the University of Queensland in Australia, and the University of Amsterdam in Holland. Several American universities also contributed to the study.<\/p>\n
The researchers point out there is no strong correlation between the patterns of aging and the typical life spans of the species. Species can have increasing mortality and still live a long time, or have declining mortality and still live a short time, according to the Max-Planck Odense Center.<\/p>\n
“It makes no sense to consider aging to be based on how old a species can become,\u201d Jones said. \u201cInstead, it is more interesting to define aging as being based on the shape of mortality trajectories: whether rates increase, decrease or remain constant with age.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adult humans get weaker as they age and then die, but that\u2019s not the typical pattern across species. Some organisms don\u2019t appear to show signs of aging at all. These are among the findings in a first-of-its-kind study published in the journal Nature this week. The study compares the aging patterns of humans and 45 other species. \u201cWe all have…","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":56130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-twocol.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[5,6,23],"tags":[488,9215,202],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-56128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colleges","category-community","category-research","tag-biology","tag-pedro-f-quintana-ascencio","tag-alumni"],"yoast_head":"\n
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