About ALE
The Aggregate Lifespan Encyclopedia integrates multiple longevity databases including the Amniote Life History Database , AnAge , Malddaba , MIDAS , the Max-Planck longevity records , PanTHERIA , the Primate Ageing Database , Species360 , and data from independent colonies. When curating ALE our goal was to provide curated maximum lifespan independent of sample size. In our analysis we found a correlation between zoo sample size and maximum lifespan. Downstream genomics work would therefore be confounded by this correlation. To that end this database includes new metrics(Q90, E90 and a boot-strap maximum lifespan) with reduced correlations to sample size. When possible, boot-strap maximums were calculated for a given species and used as the curated maximum value. In cases of animals known to struggle in captive conditions, like bats and whales, we instead used a combination of established data and wild data to fill in our curated maximum lifespan.
Curated Data
Manual reconciliation across conflicting datasets
Bias Analysis
Corrected for sample size effects in lifespan metrics
Broad Coverage
Taxonomy spanning mammals
Below is an interactive graph showing how curated maximum compares to highest available maximum lifespan. In grey are species when no curation was performed beyond selecting the highest value. Curated values are plotted in blue connected to their corresponding highest maximum value in orange. The red line is a linear regression corresponding to AnAge data as performed previously by Foley et al 2018.
In this example we show the distribution of lifespan values for cow (Bos taurus) as well as sex-segrated distributions. The highest maximum lifespan of 36 years observed among >2000 individuals is likely not representative for the species. Instead, our boot-strap maximum of 23 is used for the curated dataset. Despite being lower than the highest maximum lifespan, this boot-strap maximum is more comparable to other species that have less extensive sample sizes and is still greater than the previously-reported maximum of 20 years recorded in the Amniote life history database, AnAge, and the Max-Planck longevity records.
