Phenotypic Covariance of Longevity, Immunity and Stress Resistance in the Caenorhabditis Nematodes
Figure 1
(a) Hermaphrodite (N2, AF16) or female (EM464, CB5161) animals at the fourth larval stage (L4) were transferred onto plates pre-seeded with OP50 and monitored for survival over fifty days. Whilst hermaphrodite animals show 100% lethality over this period, survival is significantly higher for both gonochoristic species (p<0.0001, Table S1), with more than 50% of animals surviving longer than twenty days. (b) This effect is conserved across multiple wildtype isolates of each species.