Message-Id: 3620:Daniel.Promislow at QueensU.CA
From: Daniel.Promislow at QueensU.CA
To: rudi at uvvm.uvic.ca
Subject: insect ageing
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Regarding a request for reviews on insect ageing...
I don't know of any reviews dealing specifically with insect ageing
(my own work is on vertebrates) but there are certainly
a number of papers and books that you may find interesting.
Michael Rose and Caleb E. Finch have both published excellent books
on the evolution of senescence in the past year. Rose's own work, discussed
extensively in his book, deals with ageing in Drosophila. Finch provides
an exceptionally broad review of senescence throughout the animal
and plant kingdoms.
In addition, there are are some recent articles on senescence that
turn hitherto widely-accepted notions of ageing in invertebrates
on their heads. See Carey et al. 1992 (Science 258:457-461)
in which they show that mortality rates do _not_ increase
indefinitely with age, at least in medflies, and Martinez
et al. 1992 (PNAS 9920-9923), who show that senescence does,
in fact, occur in asexual metazoans.
Hope this is of some help.
Daniel Promislow
Queen's University
