Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-2022
Abstract
Sex-related differences in mortality are widespread in the animal kingdom. Although studies have shown that sex determination systems might drive lifespan evolution, sex chromosome influence on aging rates have not been investigated so far, likely due to an apparent lack of demographic data from clades including both XY (with heterogametic males) and ZW (heterogametic females) systems. Taking advantage of a unique collection of capture–recapture datasets in amphibians, a vertebrate group where XY and ZW systems have repeatedly evolved over the past 200 million years, we examined whether sex heterogamy can predict sex differences in aging rates and lifespans. We showed that the strength and direction of sex differences in aging rates (and not lifespan) differ between XY and ZW systems. Sex-specific variation in aging rates was moderate within each system, but aging rates tended to be consistently higher in the heterogametic sex. This led to small but detectable effects of sex chromosome system on sex differences in aging rates in our models. Although preliminary, our results suggest that exposed recessive deleterious mutations on the X/Z chromosome (the “unguarded X/Z effect”) or repeat-rich Y/W chromosome (the “toxic Y/W effect”) could accelerate aging in the heterogametic sex in some vertebrate clades.
Version
The Version of Record (VoR) of this Author Manuscript has been published and can be accessed using the DOI below.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.14410
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Publication Title
Evolution
Volume Number
76
Issue Number
2
First Page
346
ISSN
0014-3820
Recommended Citation
Cayuela, Hugo; Reinke, Beth; and 48 other co-authors, "Sex-related Differences in Aging Rate Are Associated with Sex Chromosome System in Amphibians" (2022). Biology Faculty Publications. 47.
https://neiudc.neiu.edu/bio-pub/47