L 95: “Most prevailing theories are based on explicit assumptions about constraints that force natural selection to accept shorter lifespans when longer ones would support higher individual fitness.”
I have assumed regarding advanced primates, that old age is a group selection adaptation to enable more faithful transmission of knowledge.
Perhaps parental aid is more due to “close kin selection”.
Old men telling stories, seems, however, to only be a group selection thing.
This revolves around the question “What is adaptive about life beyond the reproductive age?”.
L 371: “standard population genetic theory”; This needs a link.
L 515: Teleological Language: Good note! Such translations are helpful.
L 814: There is a related mystery that would well to introduce: Why do many species, especially humans, live so long beyond reproductive age. Care of offspring accounts for some of that. He raises the issue at L: 1360.
L 898: I am with Blagosklonny.
L 1206: This book is really addressed to the professional biologist. If Mittledorf made half as many errors as he ascribes to others he could, I suspect, carry out his plan for the book. I don’t claim that he does but a non specialist, like me, is unlikely to catch such errors. Still I enjoy reading the book for its reasoning, regardless of my inability to check the facts. I look forward to reading responses from biologists to the book.
L 1292:
L 1602: The planaria story is fascinating. It is as if there were one real parameter driving gene expression and the parameter is not a monotonic function of time.
L 2080:
Until the mechanisms of “DNA repair machinery” is elucidated there remains ample room for many possible explanations.