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I am James Carey,
distinguished Professor
of Entomology
at the University of
California, Davis,
and senior scholar in the
Center for the Economics and
Demography of Aging at
the University of
California at Berkeley.
One of my main areas of
research is biodemography
with special emphasis
on lifespan concepts,
both of these are topics
for this lecture.
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Before I talk about
biodemography,
I need to first
define demography.
Demography is the study of
populations and the
processes that shape them,
that is birth, death,
and migration.
0:35
Biodemography is a
field anchored in
formal demography that
interconnects topics
ranging from disease,
medicine, and health
to ecology, conservation,
and population biology.
The two main branches of
biodemography are the following:
first, biological
demographic research
directly related to human health
with an emphasis
on health surveys,
a field of research
that might be called
biomedical demography
or epidemiology because
it is a cross between
demography and epidemiology
and the second is research on
the intersection of
demography and biology.
This is as opposed
to biomedicine.
This endeavor, we will refer
to as biological demography.
This is the area of biodemography
that is my specialty.
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To put biodemography in
a more global
scientific context,
consider the various
hierarchies in science.
We can start at the
level of the molecular,
cell, tissue, and organ biology.
Then, we have the individual,
the cohort, and population,
beyond which we have community,
ecosystem, and Gaea,
and beyond that,
planetary solar systems,
the galaxies, and
the entire universe.
Demography can be
considered here at
the individual cohort
and population levels.
Biologists sometimes refer to
the concepts of skin in
and skin out biology,
which in essence refers to
the level of the individual.
This is where demography begins,
and the population
is where it ends,
at least with respect to
classical demography.
Now, to situate biodemography
within this framework,
we consider humans not as
the sole focus for study,
but rather humans situated
in the context of
the tree of life.
Thus, we can use
non-human species
and model animal systems,
such as nematodes, fruit
flies, and laboratory rodents
to address basic questions
about aging and lifespan.
Because they are basic
and general questions,
the answers also
apply to humans.
As with the wide breadth of
virtually all disciplines and
subdisciplines in science,
the scope of
biodemography, in general,
in this subarea focusing
specifically on
biological demography
is extensive,
with topics ranging from sex,
mortality differentials,
caloric restriction, and
cost of reproduction
to aging, genetics,
survival in the wild,
and the impact of
activity on longevity.
Therefore it is
impossible to provide
a detailed overview of
this area of biodemography
in any single lecture.
