Sparks, A.M. orcid.org/0000-0002-7697-4632, Hammers, M., Komdeur, J. et al. (3 more authors) (2022) Sex‐dependent effects of parental age on offspring fitness in a cooperatively breeding bird. Evolution Letters, 6 (6). pp. 438-449. ISSN 2056-3744
Abstract
Parental age can have considerable effects on offspring phenotypes and health. However, intergenerational effects may also have longer term effects on offspring fitness. Few studies have investigated parental age effects on offspring fitness in natural populations while also testing for sex- and environment-specific effects. Further, longitudinal parental age effects may be masked by population-level processes such as the selective disappearance of poor-quality individuals. Here, we used multigenerational data collected on individually marked Seychelles warblers (Acrocephalus sechellensis) to investigate the impact of maternal and paternal age on offspring life span and lifetime reproductive success. We found negative effects of maternal age on female offspring life span and lifetime reproductive success, which were driven by within-mother effects. There was no difference in annual reproductive output of females born to older versus younger mothers, suggesting that the differences in offspring lifetime reproductive success were driven by effects on offspring life span. In contrast, there was no association between paternal age and female offspring life span or either maternal or paternal age and male offspring life span. Lifetime reproductive success, but not annual reproductive success, of male offspring increased with maternal age, but this was driven by between-mother effects. No paternal age effects were found on female offspring lifetime reproductive success but there was a positive between-father effect on male offspring lifetime reproductive success. We did not find strong evidence for environment-dependent parental age effects. Our study provides evidence for parental age effects on the lifetime fitness of offspring and shows that such effects can be sex dependent. These results add to the growing literature indicating the importance of intergenerational effects on long-term offspring performance and highlight that these effects can be an important driver of variation in longevity and fitness in the wild.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) |
Keywords: | Ageing; fitness; intergenerational effects; Lansing effect; life span; maternal age effect; paternal age effect; senescence; Seychelles warbler |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NATURAL ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH COUNCIL NE/I021748/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 22 Nov 2022 11:25 |
Last Modified: | 03 Jan 2024 13:19 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/evl3.300 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:193636 |