Abstract
A growing body of studies is showing that offspring telomere length (TL) can
be influenced by the age of their parents. Such a relationship might be
explained by variation in TL at conception (gamete effect) and/or by alteration
of early growth conditions in species providing parental care. In a long-lived
bird with bi-parental care, the Alpine swift (Apus melba), we exchanged an
uneven number of 2 to 4-day-old nestlings between pairs as part of a brood
size manipulation. Nestling TL was measured at 50 days after hatching,
which allowed investigating the influence of the age of both their biological
and foster parents on offspring TL, after controlling for the manipulation.
Nestling TL was negatively related to the age of their biological father and
foster mother. Nestling TL did not differ between enlarged and reduced
broods. These findings suggest that offspring from older males were fertilized
by gametes with shorter telomeres, presumably due to a greater cell division
history or a longer accumulation of damage, and that older females may
have provided poorer parental care to their offspring.
be influenced by the age of their parents. Such a relationship might be
explained by variation in TL at conception (gamete effect) and/or by alteration
of early growth conditions in species providing parental care. In a long-lived
bird with bi-parental care, the Alpine swift (Apus melba), we exchanged an
uneven number of 2 to 4-day-old nestlings between pairs as part of a brood
size manipulation. Nestling TL was measured at 50 days after hatching,
which allowed investigating the influence of the age of both their biological
and foster parents on offspring TL, after controlling for the manipulation.
Nestling TL was negatively related to the age of their biological father and
foster mother. Nestling TL did not differ between enlarged and reduced
broods. These findings suggest that offspring from older males were fertilized
by gametes with shorter telomeres, presumably due to a greater cell division
history or a longer accumulation of damage, and that older females may
have provided poorer parental care to their offspring.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 20170188 |
| Journal | Biology Letters |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| Early online date | 13 Sept 2017 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Sept 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Data accessibility. Data available on http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ts635Funding. This work was supported by the Swiss NSF (grant no. 31003A_124988 to P.B.) and the French CNRS (PICS n8 5296 France-Switzerland to F.C.).
Acknowledgements. We thank Antoine Stocker for helping in the field and Anne-Lyse Ducrest for the POMc sequencing.
Keywords
- telomere
- bird
- environmental effect
- parental age
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Data from: Offspring telomere length in the long lived Alpine swift is negatively related to the age of their biological father and foster mother
Criscuolo, F. (Creator), Zahn, S. (Creator), Bize, P. (Creator) & Paton, G. (Data Manager), Dryad Digital Repository, 8 Sept 2017
DOI: 10.5061/dryad.ts635, http://datadryad.org/resource/doi:10.5061/dryad.ts635
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