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Perspectives
The link between too much sex and a shortening of life was made as far back as Aristotle, who suggested that such an expenditure of energy could be costly in the long term. This "cost of sex" has been verified in a number of species, often as a result of damage during mating. We were also interested in whether or not there was a decline in breeding activity in older animals as well, as ageing has been proposed as a universal process affecting all of life. However, in wild insects it has been proposed that the animals simply don't live long enough to experience ageing.
Dr Christopher Hassall
University of Leeds
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This page is a summary of: Live fast, die old: no evidence of reproductive senescence or costs of mating in a damselfly (Odonata: Zygoptera), Journal of Animal Ecology, July 2015, Wiley, DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.12407.
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Resources
Preprint
A preprint version of this article is available for free at Figshare
Daily Express press coverage
The Daily Express picked up on our piece on damselfly reproductive senescence (or the lack thereof). The author had some fun with it: “GOOD news: the older you get, the better the sex. Bad news: it only applies if you’re an azure damselfly.”
Red Orbit press coverage
Red Orbit covered our reproductive senescence paper in a piece entitled "Age doesn’t dull damselfly sex"
Ottawa Citizen press coverage
The Ottawa Citizen covered the paper focusing on Tom Sherratt's contribution in a piece called "Carleton researcher probes the (indefatigable) sex lives of damselflies"
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