Despite its near-universal importance, our understanding of the mechanisms driving aging have been hampered by the complexity of the aging process at the molecular, cellular and organismal level. My lab seeks to fill this knowledge gap with a unique system: ants. Ants represent outstanding models of plasticity: ants feature epigenetically-determined castes which show stark differences in behavior, reproduction, and lifespan, the latter which can differ up to 20-fold between castes. Utilizing complimentary species featuring adult-inducible or extreme (>20 fold) lifespan plasticity, paired with the PI’s expertise in applying mechanistic approaches to non-model ants our lab seeks to understand how ants modulate conserved features of aging ‘on demand’. This work will not only shed light on how ants exhibit unprecedented lifespan plasticity and block (or reverse) many of the classical Hallmarks of aging, but how ant-innovations fit within the wider conserved framework of aging.