Eleanor J Phillips, Mirre J P Simons
This is a plain language summary of a Functional Ecology research article which can be found here.
Restricting food intake extends lifespan across species, termed dietary restriction. Despite a lot of research into the physiology of dietary restriction, we have not fully pinpointed the underlying mechanisms nor the precise components of the diet responsible. Moreover, we still do not understand why the response to dietary restriction is so ubiquitous, especially given that it seems contrary to prevailing evolutionary theory. It is puzzling that a response to reducing resource availability extends lifespan whilst also reducing reproductive output. An explanation for this is provided by the idea that dietary restriction is a lab artefact due to the benign conditions in which experimental animals are kept, in comparison to the wild. Recent evidence using the fruit fly supported this idea, with the dietary restriction response reported as absent at low temperatures. Here we repeated this work with a larger sample size and a wider range of diet and do not replicate these findings. We find that dietary restriction does extend lifespan across different temperatures in the fruit fly. Our work therefore does not support the lab artefact hypothesis.
Functional Ecology: Plain Language Summaries 