Simulation of the Evolution of Aging: Effects of Aggression and Kin-Recognition

Current biological theory has no commonly accepted view on the phenomenon of aging. On the one hand it is considered as an inescapable degradation immanent to complex biological systems and on the other hand as outcome of evolution. At the moment, there are three major complementary theories of evolutionary origin of senescence – the programmed death theory, the mutation accumulation theory, and the antagonistic pleiotropy theory. The later two are rather extensively studied theoretically and computationally then the former one is paid less attention. Here we present computer multi-agent model of aging evolution compatible with theories of programmed death and mutation accumulation. In our study we test how presence of aggression and kin-recognition affects evolution of age dependent suicide which is an analog of programmed death in the model.