Ageing as “early-life inertia”: Disentangling life-history trade-offs along a lifetime of an individual

The theory that ageing evolves because of competitive resource allocation between the soma and the germline has been challenged by studies showing that somatic maintenance can be improved without impairing reproduction. However, it has been suggested that cost-free improvement in somatic maintenance is possible only under a narrow range of benign conditions. Here, we show that experimental downregulation of insulin/IGF-1 signaling (IIS) in C....