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I was being careful because I think it's not so simple. Some changes are not deleterious (don't cause death), but still confer subtle cumulative benefits. If in

• Symmetry 11y ago
  That would only be true if all individuals were living to the full 100 years their biology allowed. That the sort of environment that bacteria in a growth medium have but not something you would see in a steady state. And also remember that every organism would reproduce each year so you would have %50 of you population new each year unless the oldest organisms can somehow prevent the youngest ones from reproducing. I would agree that that last would be something that evolution would tend to prevent.
  • darkmighty 11y ago
    I see, I agree on that (though I think I would need to do some concrete modelling to clear it in my head). It's just so intuitive that short lifespan creatures evolve quicker... take Blue Whales versus Viruses or Plankton. I might be thinking necessarily they're correlated variables in nature, not that there's a direct mechanism cutting off lifespans. Consider the possibility that creatures with longer avg. lifespans must have longer development time until reproduction. This will affect the average lifetime of reproducing individuals -- so it's an example of longer lifetimes implying slower evolution. In other words, I'm thinking it might be a sort of necessary correlation.