Data from: Parental age effects and the evolution of senescence

<p>Most theory on the evolution of senescence implicitly assumes that all offspring are of equal quality. However, in addition to age-related declines in survival and fecundity (classically-defined senescence), many organisms exhibit age-related declines in offspring quality, a phenomenon known as a parental age effect. Theoretical work suggests that parental age effects may alter age-trajectories of selection and therefore shape the evolution of senescence; however, to date, these analyses have been limited to idealized life cycles, and models of maternal care in human populations. To gain a broader understanding of how parental age effects may shape age-trajectories of selection, we extend the classic age-structured population projection model to also account for parental age structure, and apply this model to empirical data from an aquatic plant known to exhibit parental age effects (the duckweed <i>Lemna minor</i>), as well as a diverse set of simulated life cycles. Our results suggest that parental age effects alter predictions from classic theory on the evolution of senescence. Age-related declines in offspring quality reduce the relative value of late-life reproduction, leading to steeper age-related declines in the force of natural selection than would otherwise be expected, and potentially favoring the evolution of more rapid rates of senescence.</p>