TY - JOUR TI - Late-life fitness gains and reproductive death in Cardiocondyla obscurior ants AU - Jaimes-Nino, Luisa Maria AU - Heinze, Jürgen AU - Oettler, Jan A2 - Abouheif, Ehab A2 - Desplan, Claude VL - 11 PY - 2022 DA - 2022/04/06 SP - e74695 C1 - eLife 2022;11:e74695 DO - 10.7554/eLife.74695 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74695 AB - A key hypothesis for the occurrence of senescence is the decrease in selection strength due to the decrease in the proportion of newborns from parents attaining an advanced age – the so-called selection shadow. Strikingly, queens of social insects have long lifespans and reproductive senescence seems to be negligible. By lifelong tracking of 99 Cardiocondyla obscurior (Formicidae: Myrmicinae) ant colonies, we find that queens shift to the production of sexuals in late life regardless of their absolute lifespan or the number of workers present. Furthermore, RNAseq analyses of old queens past their peak of reproductive performance showed the development of massive pathology while queens were still fertile, leading to rapid death. We conclude that the evolution of superorganismality is accompanied by ‘continuusparity,’ a life history strategy that is distinct from other iteroparous and semelparous strategies across the tree of life, in that it combines continuous reproduction with a fitness peak late in life. KW - Cardiocondyla obscurior KW - aging KW - selection shadow KW - senescence KW - social insects JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -