ArticleHeredity2015
Maternal telomere length inheritance in the king penguin.
Article in Heredity, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Parental Age Effects on Offspring Telomere Length Across Vertebrates: A Meta-Analysis.Molecular ecology · 2026Pooled it
- The relationship between telomere length and mortality risk in non-model vertebrate systems: a meta-analysis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Pooled it
- Environmental and Genetic Determinants of Early-Life Telomere Length in Tree Swallows.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Reactive Oxygen Species: Molecular Mechanisms, Cellular Targets, and Implications for Genomic Stability.BioMed research international · 2026Review
- Increased Reproductive Output and Telomere Shortening Following Calcium Supplementation in a Wild Songbird.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Evidence of Paternal Effects on Telomere Length Increases in Early Life.Frontiers in genetics · 2022Article
- Individual telomere dynamics and their links to life history in a viviparous lizard.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- No sex differences in adult telomere length across vertebrates: a meta-analysis.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- The environmental and genetic determinants of chick telomere length in Tree Swallows (Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Epigenetic inheritance of telomere length in wild birds.PLoS genetics · 2019Article
- The Genetic Architecture of Bovine Telomere Length in Early Life and Association With Animal Fitness.Frontiers in genetics · 2019Article
- Bovine telomere dynamics and the association between telomere length and productive lifespan.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Heritability of telomere variation: it is all about the environment!Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Review
- The mitochondrial genome, paternal age and telomere length in humans.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Shorter telomeres precede population extinction in wild lizards.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Does oxidative stress shorten telomeresBiology letters · 2017Review
- Age at maturation has sex- and temperature-specific effects on telomere length in a fish.Oecologia · 2017Article
- Is telomere length associated with mate choice in a songbird with a high rate of extra-pair paternity?PloS one · 2017Article
- Interactions between parental traits, environmental harshness and growth rate in determining telomere length in wild juvenile salmon.Molecular ecology · 2016Article
- Embryonic and postnatal telomere length decrease with ovulation order within clutches.Scientific reports · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Telomeres are emerging as a biomarker for ageing and survival, and are likely important in shaping life-history trade-offs. In particular, telomere length with which one starts in life has been linked to lifelong survival, suggesting that early telomere dynamics are somehow related to life-history trajectories. This result highlights the importance of determining the extent to which telomere length is inherited, as a crucial factor determining early life telomere length. Given the scarcity of species for which telomere length inheritance has been studied, it is pressing to assess the generality of telomere length inheritance patterns. Further, information on how this pattern changes over the course of growth in individuals living under natural conditions should provide some insight on the extent to which environmental constraints also shape telomere dynamics. To fill this gap partly, we followed telomere inheritance in a population of king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus). We tested for paternal and maternal influence on chick initial telomere length (10 days old after hatching), and how these relationships changed with chick age (at 70, 200 and 300 days old). Based on a correlative approach, offspring telomere length was positively associated with maternal telomere length early in life (at 10 days old). However, this relationship was not significant at older ages. These data suggest that telomere length in birds is maternally inherited. Nonetheless, the influence of environmental conditions during growth remained an important factor shaping telomere length, as the maternal link disappeared with chicks' age.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.