I think the idea is that there aren't "longevity" genes only aging genes. Put another way, aging isn't an accident caused by the accumulation of damage. It's a selected for trait, a sort of slow, whole body apoptosis used to get rid of the soma once it's served it's purpose. Lifespan is simply the well timed removal of a generation once it has had the opportunity to reproduce and raise its brood.
I’m not sure I buy that completely. If this were a neutral choice, why would a gene take the 50% chance of not having made it to the next generation? (Or in the case of many offspring, invest half its resources into a different copy of the gene?)
At least in mammals, killing the soma is on the surface such a massive waste of resources that I believe it must be either: (a) biologically implausible to keep an animal reproducing for a longer timespan or (b) caused by mechanisms that are counterweighted by massive reproductive benefits while the animal is young.
> killing the soma is on the surface such a massive waste of resources
How is it a waste of resources? Evolutionarily, the goal is to produce another successful generation who then begets another generation and so on. The rate at which that happens is a balance between what is necessary to confer the best chance of survival to each child, the number of children needed to outweigh the mortality rate, and the required mutation and crossover to adapt to the environment. Keeping the same individuals in circulation longer doesn't confer an advantage to their offspring since they already posses the same genes. It would more likely hinder the propagation of their genes by taking resources away from their progeny and competing for mates, territory, status, whatever.
Perfect! And reproductive longevity is strongly selected. Mole rats and bats, despite small bodies and quite high metabolic rates live far longer than might be expected from simple allometric relations. Reproductive lifestyles can evolve by bootstrapping on large numbers of DNA variants that modulate and molecular-cellular systems.
