ArticleScientific reports2017
No evidence for parental age effects on offspring leukocyte telomere length in free-living Soay sheep.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Parental Age Effects on Offspring Telomere Length Across Vertebrates: A Meta-Analysis.Molecular ecology · 2026Pooled it
- Persistent maternal age effects on male offspring fitness traits in a wild mammal population.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- Article
- Prenatal environment impacts telomere length in newborn dairy heifers.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Tieing together loose ends: telomere instability in cancer and aging.Molecular oncology · 2022Review
- Parental age at conception on mouse lemur's offspring longevity: Sex-specific maternal effects.PloS one · 2022Article
- Evidence of Paternal Effects on Telomere Length Increases in Early Life.Frontiers in genetics · 2022Article
- Longitudinal evidence that older parents produce offspring with longer telomeres in a wild social bird.Biology letters · 2021Article
- The deteriorating soma and the indispensable germline: gamete senescence and offspring fitness.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Intergenerational effects on offspring telomere length: interactions among maternal age, stress exposure and offspring sex.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- The environmental and genetic determinants of chick telomere length in Tree Swallows (Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Sex- And tissue-specific differences in telomere length in a reptile.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Paternal age at conception effects on offspring telomere length across species-What explains the variability?PLoS genetics · 2019Article
- Bovine telomere dynamics and the association between telomere length and productive lifespan.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Reduced telomere length in offspring of old fathers in a long-lived seabird.Biology letters · 2018Article
- Experimental demonstration that offspring fathered by old males have shorter telomeres and reduced lifespans.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- The paternal age at conception effect on offspring telomere length: mechanistic, comparative and adaptive perspectives.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
In humans, the effect of paternal age at conception (PAC) on offspring leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is well established, with older fathers thought to pass on longer telomeres to their offspring in their sperm. Few studies have looked for PAC effects in other species, but it has been hypothesised that the effect will be exacerbated in polygamous species with higher levels of sperm competition and production. We test for maternal (MAC) and paternal age at conception effects on offspring LTL in Soay sheep, a primitive breed experiencing strong sperm competition. We use qPCR to measure relative telomere length in 389 blood samples (n = 318 individuals) collected from an unmanaged population of sheep on St Kilda, where individual age and parentage are known. We find no evidence that either MAC or PAC are associated with LTL in offspring across the age range, or when considering only young lambs (n = 164). This is the first study to test for parental age effects on offspring LTL in a wild mammal population, and the results contrast with the findings of numerous human studies that find a PAC effect, as well as predictions of a stronger PAC effect in polygamous species.
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Registered trials
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.