rwilson (rwilson at panda.uchc.edu) wrote:
: It seems to me that theres no fundamental law of biology which
: excludes the possibility of a multicellular organism living a very,
: very long time. There are trees which are thousands of years old and I
: can imagine vegetative fungi living for tens of thousands of years or
: longer.
Is it even advantageous for a species to have a long life span?
As you mention later, creatures have a way of surviving at least
until reproductive age -- but after that, why should a creature
survive longer? A few mating seasons, perhaps, but after that an
individual creature becomes old genes. Even at a fast
reproductive rate, reproduction of old genes is generally not a
good idea (since evolution ensures that the good part of those
genes will probably survive anyways).
It's advantageous for *you* to live a long time, but is it
advantageous to the species? I would guess that it is, at best,
neutral, and at worst very detrimental.
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Jason Cooper jcooper at acs.ucalgary.ca
