University of Oxford
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The evolution of and escape from senescence

One of the biggest questions in evolutionary biology is why organisms become more decrepit as they age. We humans certainly do (although our longevity keeps on evolving at a pretty fast pace in developed countries), but most other organisms do not. We are particularly interested in the mechanisms that explain the wide range of ageing trajectories in survival and fertility across the tree of life.

Journal of Ecology 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The SalGo team tackles this question both from a comparative as well as from experimental perspectives. We have developed ecological models that explicitly incorporate trade-offs between various energetic and physiological functions to model the evolution of (and escape from senescence). Equally, we are also incorporating metabolomics, genetics, histological and physiological data to understand the underpinnings of senescence escapists.

SalGo Team members:
  • Connor Bernard
  • Jacques Deere
  • Mark Roper
  • Rob Salguero-Gómez
  • Alex Tchernev

 

Selected collaborators:

Selected publications:

Sanghvi K*, Vega-Trejo V*, Nakagawa S, Gascoigne S, Johnson S, Salguero-Gómez R, Pizzari T*, Sepil I*. 2024. No general effects of advancing male age on ejaculates: a meta-analysis across the animal kingdom. Nature Communications 15, 558 DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-44768-4

Roper M, Green J, Salguero-Gómez R, Bonsall M. 2023. Inclusive fitness forces of selection in an age-structured population. Communications Biology 6, 909 DOI 10.1038/s42003-023-05260-9

Deere J, Xu C, Adelmant C, Aboobaker A & Salguero-Gómez R. 2023. The hunger games as the key to happily ever after? Journal of Gerontology 78, 1116-1124 DOI: 10.1093/gerona/glad100

de Vries C, Bernard C & Salguero-Gómez R. 2023. Discretising Keyfitz' entropy for studies of actuarial senescence and comparative demography. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 14, 1312-1319 DOI 10.1111/2041-210X.14083

Morales M, Roach D, Quarles B, Cotado A, Salguero-Gómez R, Dwyer J, Munné-Bosch S. 2021. Oxidative stress markers as predictive proxies of mortality in the cosmopolitan short-lived herbaceous herb Plantago lanceolata. Environmental and Experimental Botany 191, 104598  DOI 10.1016/j.envexpbot.2021.104598

Roper M, Capdevila P & Salguero-Gómez R. 2021. Senescence: why and where selection gradients might not decline with age. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288, 20210851 DOI 10.1098/rspb.2021.0851

Bernard C, Compagnoni A & Salguero-Gómez R. 2020. Testing Finch's hypothesis: the role of organismal modularity on the escape from actuarial senescence. Functional Ecology 34, 88-106 DOI 10.1111/1365-2435.13486

Cohen A, Isaksson C & Salguero-Gómez R. 2017. Co-existence of multiple trade-off currencies has major impacts on evolutionary outcomes. PLoS ONE 12, e0189124 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0189124

Salguero-Gómez R. 2017. Implications of clonality for ageing research. Evolutionary Ecology 32, 9-28, DOI 10.1007/s10682017-9923-2

Shefferson R, Jones OR, Salguero-Gómez R. 2017. The Evolution of Senescence across the Tree of Life. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9781107078505

O'Farrell S, Salguero-Gómez R, van Rooij J M & Mumby P J. Disentangling trait-based mortality gradients in species with decoupled size and age. Journal of Animal Ecology 84, 1446-1456. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.12399

Jones OR*, Scheuerlein A*, Salguero-Gómez R, Camarda CG, Schaible R, Casper BB, Dahlgren JP, Ehrlén J, García MB, Menges E, Quintana-Ascencio PF, Caswell H, Baudisch A & Vaupel J. 2014. Diversity of ageing across the tree of life. Nature 505, 169-173. F1000Prime. DOI: 10.1038/nature12789

Salguero-Gómez R, Shefferson R & Hutchings MJ. Plants do not count… or do they? New perspectives in whole-plant senescence. Journal of Ecology 3, 545-554. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.12089

Caswell H, Salguero-Gómez R. 2013. Age, stage, and senescence in plants. Journal of Ecology 3, 585-595. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.12088


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Underline: leading/senior authors