ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2017
Selective disappearance of great tits with short telomeres in urban areas.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 78 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of urbanization on health depends on the health metric, life stage and level of urbanization: a global meta-analysis on avian species.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Pooled it
- Defying Expectations: Extended Lifespan and Age-Related Telomere Dynamics in the Tropical Bat Species,Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Variation in resistance and survival of the European bitterling fish across a gradient of Sinanodonta woodiana expansion.Oecologia · 2026Article
- Great Tit (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Increased Reproductive Output and Telomere Shortening Following Calcium Supplementation in a Wild Songbird.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Why and when should organisms elongate their telomeres? Elaborations on the 'excess resources elongation' and 'last resort elongation' hypotheses.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Prenatal thyroid hormones accelerate postnatal growth and telomere shortening in wild great tits.The Journal of experimental biology · 2023Article
- Longitudinal telomere dynamics within natural lifespans of a wild bird.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Feather corticosterone reveals that urban great tits experience lower corticosterone exposure than forest individuals during dominance-rank establishment.Conservation physiology · 2023Article
- Innate immune function and antioxidant capacity of nestlings of an African raptor covary with the level of urbanisation around breeding territories.The Journal of animal ecology · 2023Article
- Pulses of anthropogenic food availability appear to benefit parents, but compromise nestling growth in urban red-winged starlings.Oecologia · 2021Article
- Feather, But Not Plasma, Glucocorticoid Response to Artificial Light at Night Differs between Urban and Forest Blue Tit Nestlings.Integrative and comparative biology · 2021Article
- Urban environment alter the timing of progression of testicular recrudescence in tree sparrow (Passer montanus).Environmental science and pollution research international · 2021Article
- Individual telomere dynamics and their links to life history in a viviparous lizard.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Continent-wide genomic signatures of adaptation to urbanisation in a songbird across Europe.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Long-lived termite kings and queens activate telomerase in somatic organs.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Telomere lengths correlate with fitness but assortative mating by telomeres confers no benefit to fledgling recruitment.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Urbanization is associated with modifications in DNA methylation in a small passerine bird.Evolutionary applications · 2021Article
- No sex differences in adult telomere length across vertebrates: a meta-analysis.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Urban environments pose novel challenges, as well as opportunities, for urban-dwelling wildlife. Although differences have been reported in several phenotypic traits (e.g. morphology, physiology and behaviour) between urban and rural populations, it is poorly understood whether this affects individual fitness. Telomere dynamics are posited as one possible mechanism underlying senescence and mortality. It was recently shown that telomere shortening is accelerated when growing up in an urban, compared with a rural, environment. However, the implications of accelerated telomere attrition for fitness are still unclear. Here, we examine the relationship between telomere length (TL) and survival in a bird common to urban and rural environments, and during both early and later life. The results reveal that TL is a strong predictor of post-fledging survival and recruitment in both habitats but, crucially, selective disappearance of individuals with short telomeres early in life is more pronounced in the urban environment, resulting in a longer average TL among the adult population. However, following recruitment, we found no difference in the relationship between TL and survival between the urban and rural environments. This indicates that the urban environment has negative effects in early life, while during later life the benefits could potentially outweigh the costs.
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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.