According to recent empirical studies, reproductive senescence, the decline in reproductive success with increasing age, seems to be nearly ubiquitous in the wild. However, a clear understanding of the evolutionary causes and consequences of reproductive senescence is still lacking and requires new and integrative approaches. After identifying the sequential and complex nature of female reproductive senescence, we show that the relative contributions of physiological decline and alterations in the efficiency of parental care to reproductive senescence remain unknown and need to be assessed in the light of current evolutionary theories of ageing. We demonstrate that, although reproductive senescence is generally studied only from the female viewpoint, age‐specific female reproductive success strongly depends on male–female interactions. Thus, a reduction in male fertilization efficiency with increasing age has detrimental consequences for female fitness. Lastly, we call for investigations of the role of environmental conditions on reproductive senescence, which could provide salient insights into the underlying sex‐specific mechanisms of reproductive success. We suggest that embracing such directions should allow building new bridges between reproductive senescence and the study of sperm competition, parental care, mate choice and environmental conditions.

中文翻译：

---

生殖衰老：野外的新视角

根据最近的实证研究，生殖衰老，随着年龄的增长，生殖成功率下降，似乎在野外几乎无处不在。然而，仍然缺乏对生殖衰老的进化原因和后果的清晰理解，需要新的综合方法。在确定了女性生殖衰老的连续性和复杂性之后，我们表明生理衰退和父母照顾效率改变对生殖衰老的相对贡献仍然未知，需要根据当前的衰老进化理论进行评估。我们证明，虽然一般只从女性的角度研究生殖衰老，但特定年龄的女性生殖成功在很大程度上取决于男性与女性的相互作用。因此，随着年龄的增长，男性受精效率的降低对女性的健康产生不利影响。最后，我们呼吁调查环境条件对生殖衰老的作用，这可以为生殖成功的潜在性别特异性机制提供重要见解。我们建议接受这些方向应该允许在生殖衰老与精子竞争、父母照顾、配偶选择和环境条件的研究之间建立新的桥梁。