Coupling lifespan and aging? The age at onset of body mass decline associates positively with sex-specific lifespan but negatively with environment-specific lifespan

Abstract

Whether lifespan scales to age-associated changes in health and disease is an urgent question in societies with increasing lifespan. Body mass is associated with organismal functioning in many species, and often changes with age. We here tested in zebra finches whether two factors that decreased lifespan, sex and poor environmental quality, accelerated the onset of body mass declines. We subjected 597 birds for nine years to experimentally manipulated foraging costs (harsh = H, benign = B) during development (small vs large brood size) and in adulthood (easy vs hard foraging conditions) in a 2 × 2 design. This yielded four treatment combinations (HH, HB, BH, BB) for each sex. Harsh environments during development and in adulthood decreased average body mass additively. The body mass aging trajectory showed a short steep increase in early adulthood, followed by a plateau and then a decline after 5 years. This decline occurred in all groups except for HB females, which gained mass until death. Surprisingly, the onset of body mass decline was earlier in experimental groups with a longer lifespan. In contrast, the onset of body mass decline was one year earlier in females, which lived two months (4%) shorter than males. Thus, the onset of body mass aging associated positively with the sex-specific differences in lifespan, but negatively with the environmental modulation of lifespan. Thus, body mass aging trajectories did not generally scale to lifespan, and we discuss the possible causes and implications of this finding.