Fitness benefits of dietary restriction

Sultanova, Z., Ivimey-Cook, E. , Chapman, T. and Maklakov, A. (2021) Fitness benefits of dietary restriction. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 288(1963), 20211787. (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2021.1787) (PMID:34814748) (PMCID:PMC8611328)

Abstract

Dietary restriction (DR) improves survival across a wide range of taxa yet remains poorly understood. The key unresolved question is whether this evolutionarily conserved response to temporary lack of food is adaptive. Recent work suggests that early-life DR reduces survival and reproduction when nutrients subsequently become plentiful, thereby challenging adaptive explanations. A new hypothesis maintains that increased survival under DR results from reduced costs of overfeeding. We tested the adaptive value of DR response in an outbred population of Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies. We found that DR females did not suffer from reduced survival upon subsequent re-feeding and had increased reproduction and mating success compared to their continuously fully fed (FF) counterparts. The increase in post-DR reproductive performance was of sufficient magnitude that females experiencing early-life DR had the same total fecundity as continuously FF individuals. Our results suggest that the DR response is adaptive and increases fitness when temporary food shortages cease.

• Item Type: Articles
• Keywords: Ageing, dietary restriction, lifespan extension, senescence.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Ivimey-Cook, Dr Edward
• Authors: Sultanova, Z., Ivimey-Cook, E., Chapman, T., and Maklakov, A.
• College/School: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Biodiversity, One Health & Veterinary Medicine
• Journal Name: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
• Publisher: Royal Society of London
• ISSN: 0962-8452
• ISSN (Online): 1471-2954
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2021 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 288(1963):20211787
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence