Fascinatingly, sociality in invertebrates is associated with longevity and plasticity of the pace of ageing. To reveal more about this phenomenon, Rau and colleges looked at how non-reproducing and reproducing termites responded to environmental stress in the form of temperature variation. They found that the oxidative stress defence response was stronger in workers than the reproducing queens. They concluded that this was evidence for greater ‘anti-ageing’ mechanism investment by sterile workers than queens. Although termites and humans are quite different, work like this on how reproductive value can affect ageing in social insects helps to build overall understanding of the ageing process.
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