Somatic maintenance impacts the evolution of mutation rate

BACKGROUND: The evolution of multi-cellular animals has produced a conspicuous trend toward increased body size. This trend has introduced at least two novel problems: an expected elevated risk of somatic disorders, such as cancer, and declining evolvability due to generally reduced population size, lower reproduction rate and extended generation time. Low population size is widely recognized to explain the high mutation rates in animals by limiting the presumed universally negative selection acting on mutation rates. RESULTS: Here, we present evidence from stochastic modeling that the direction and strength of selection acting on mutation rates is highly dependent on the evolution of somatic maintenance, and thus longevity, which modulates the cost of somatic mutations. CONCLUSIONS: We argue that the impact of the evolution of longevity on mutation rates may have been critical in facilitating animal evolution. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12862-019-1496-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.