For the next post on cases where aging is adaptive, I think the octopus would make a great case study since they are well known for “self-destructing” after reproducing, theorized possibly to prevent them from competing with their offspring or eating them, i.e. octopuses that die after reproducing so they don’t outcompete their offspring and drive the species extinct through a cycle of falling survival to reproduction rates.
Interestingly, Other Minds (a recent popular science book about cephalopods) seems to mostly put credence in non-adaptive theories, and indeed has a very nice general exposition of these theories (the section of the book after the passages I quote in that link talks at length about octopus semelparity).
For the next post on cases where aging is adaptive, I think the octopus would make a great case study since they are well known for “self-destructing” after reproducing, theorized possibly to prevent them from competing with their offspring or eating them, i.e. octopuses that die after reproducing so they don’t outcompete their offspring and drive the species extinct through a cycle of falling survival to reproduction rates.
Interestingly, Other Minds (a recent popular science book about cephalopods) seems to mostly put credence in non-adaptive theories, and indeed has a very nice general exposition of these theories (the section of the book after the passages I quote in that link talks at length about octopus semelparity).