Aging in the Wild - Medflies and Nematodes

Project Leader

James R. Carey, Professor, Department of Entomology
One Shields Avenue, University of California, Davis, CA 95616

Dates of Entire Project Period

7/1/2003-6/30/2008

Project Objectives

We propose to develop a novel and far-reaching field program that is initially concerned with aging and life span of Mediterranean fruit flies (medflies) in field populations in Greece and will later expand to include nematode worms. This will be the first research program concerned with aging in the field to use a laboratory model system for which a massive amount of baseline demographic data is available.

Novel Methodology

The methodological concept for the program involves development of a new method for assessing the demographic characteristics of field populations that we refer to as the 'captive cohort method' and which relies on the information content of live-captured flies; that the post-capture patterns of reproduction and death will provide information about the age at capture and previous experience in the field. The approach will involve:

• building upon the experimental and statistical methods developed in the highly successful program on the biodemography of the medfly;
• developing new statistical tools that can be brought to bear on the life history data collected on wild-caught medflies;
• gathering baseline biodemographic information on the nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans, that will be used subsequently for expanding the system to include this well-studied invertebrate.

Anticipated Results

The program will generate new large-scale demographic databases for the honey bee, wild medflies, and C. elegans and life history data from the literature on several dozen vertebrate species, introduce new statistical models for analysis of demographic data on model species; develop a novel methodology for studying aging in the wild, develop more fully the mathematical foundations of biodemography, generate new models and theories concerned with the role of intergenerational transfer and sociality in the evolution of life span, explore questions concerned with the effects of stochastic environments on the evolution life span and hazard rates, and use comparative demography to identify general principles concerning life span evolution.

Performance Site

Main Campus and Bee Biology Research facility, University of California, Davis, CA 95616

Key Personnel

Progress/Data/Papers/Development

    Progress Report