The DOI matches its Crossref record; 39 of the 39 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Rethinking the evolutionary theory of aging: Transfers, not births, shape senescence in social species
Open accessAbstract
The classic evolutionary theory of aging explains why mortality rises with age: as individuals grow older, less lifetime fertility remains, so continued survival contributes less to reproductive fitness. However, successful reproduction often involves intergenerational transfers as well as fertility. In the formal theory offered here, age-specific selective pressure on mortality depends on a weighted average of remaining fertility (the classic effect) and remaining intergenerational transfers to be made to others. For species at the optimal quantity–investment tradeoff for offspring, only the transfer effect shapes mortality, explaining postreproductive survival and why juvenile mortality declines with age. It also explains the evolution of lower fertility, longer life, and increased investments in offspring.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The genetical theory of natural selection
Fisher, R. A. (1930) · doi:10.5962/bhl.title.27468 · Cited by 17,617
The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I
Hamilton, W. D. (1964) · Journal of Theoretical Biology · doi:10.1016/0022-5193(64)90038-4 · Cited by 15,725
The Evolution of Life-histories
Benton, T. G., & Stearne, S. C. (1993) · The Journal of Animal Ecology · doi:10.2307/5403 · Cited by 12,228
Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man: The Darwinian Pivot
(2017) · Routledge eBooks · doi:10.4324/9781315129266 · Cited by 7,252
Pleiotropy, natural selection, and the evolution of senescence.
Williams, G. C. (1957) · Evolution · doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.1957.tb02911.x · Cited by 4,279
The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II
Hamilton, W. D. (1964) · Journal of Theoretical Biology · doi:10.1016/0022-5193(64)90039-6 · Cited by 4,144
An Exact Consumption-Loan Model of Interest with or without the Social Contrivance of Money
Samuelson, P. A. (1958) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/258100 · Cited by 3,534
The Evolution of Parental Care
Clutton-Brock, T. H. (1991) · Princeton University Press eBooks · doi:10.1515/9780691206981 · Cited by 2,762
The moulding of senescence by natural selection
Hamilton, W. D. (1966) · Journal of Theoretical Biology · doi:10.1016/0022-5193(66)90184-6 · Cited by 2,263
Roff, D. (2001) · Encyclopedia of Biodiversity · doi:10.1016/b0-12-226865-2/00175-9 · Cited by 2,039
Cited by
Broken Limits to Life Expectancy
Oeppen, J., & Vaupel, J. W. (2002) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1069675 · Cited by 2,819
Longevity Among Hunter‐ Gatherers: A Cross‐Cultural Examination
Gurven, M., & Kaplan, H. (2007) · Population and Development Review · doi:10.1111/j.1728-4457.2007.00171.x · Cited by 670
Reproductive protein protects functionally sterile honey bee workers from oxidative stress
Seehuus, S.-C., Norberg, K., Gimsa, U., Krekling, T., & Amdam, G. V. (2006) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0502681103 · Cited by 585
The case for negative senescence
W. Vaupel, J., Baudisch, A., Dölling, M., A. Roach, D., & Gampe, J. (2004) · Theoretical Population Biology · doi:10.1016/j.tpb.2003.12.003 · Cited by 361
The evolutionary and ecological roots of human social organization
Kaplan, H. S., Hooper, P. L., & Gurven, M. (2009) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2009.0115 · Cited by 353
Metadata
- Authors
- Lee, R. D.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2003-07-23
- Volume
- 100
- Issue
- 16
- Pages
- 9637-9642
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- OpenAlex
- W2041250763
- Cited by
- 395
- References
- 39
- FWCI
- 24.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Rethinking the evolutionary theory of aging: Transfers, not births, shape senescence in social species. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1073/pnas.1530303100
- The paper
- Lee, R. D. (2003). Rethinking the evolutionary theory of aging: Transfers, not births, shape senescence in social species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1530303100
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
