ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2018
Why are there associations between telomere length and behaviour?
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed.
- Ageing in Honeybees: Telomere Length Is Driven by Climate and Resource Availability Rather Than Urbanisation or Pollution.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Genomic Integrity in Gull Chicks Predicts Colony Departure and Postfledging Movements.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Infant buccal telomere length: associations with maternal distress in pregnancy and offspring temperament.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Telomere length as a biomarker for fetal fraction prediction in non-invasive prenatal testing.PloS one · 2025Article
- Guides and cheats: producer-scrounger dynamics in the human-honeyguide mutualism.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Developmental Correlates of Accelerated Molar Eruption in Early Childhood.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2023Article
- The shelterin protein expansion of telomere dynamics: Linking early life adversity, life history, and the hallmarks of aging.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Associations Between Children's Telomere Length, Parental Intrusiveness, and the Development of Early Externalizing Behaviors.Child psychiatry and human development · 2023Article
- Causes and consequences of variation in early-life telomere length in a bird metapopulation.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Telomere length predicts timing and intensity of migratory behaviour in a nomadic songbird.Biology letters · 2022Article
- Telomere length correlates with physiological and behavioural responses of a long-lived seabird to an ecologically relevant challenge.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Early life adversity has long-term effects on sociality and interaction style in female baboons.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Measurement of Telomere Length for Longitudinal Analysis: Implications of Assay Precision.American journal of epidemiology · 2021Article
- Space Medicine: Why Do Recently Published Papers about Telomere Length Alterations Increase our Uncertainty Rather than Reduce it?Journal of biomedical physics & engineering · 2021Article
- Modifiable mediators associated with the relationship between adiposity and leukocyte telomere length in US adults: The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.Preventive medicine · 2020Article
- Telomere Length and Psychopathology: Specificity and Direction of Effects Within the Bucharest Early Intervention Project.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2020Article
- Adiposity and Leukocyte Telomere Length in US Adults by Sex-Specific Race/Ethnicity: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.Ethnicity & disease · 2020Article
- Controlling for baseline telomere length biases estimates of the rate of telomere attrition.Royal Society open science · 2019Article
- Smoking does not accelerate leucocyte telomere attrition: a meta-analysis of 18 longitudinal cohorts.Royal Society open science · 2019Article
- Telomere attrition: metabolic regulation and signalling function?Biology letters · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Individual differences in telomere length are associated with individual differences in behaviour in humans and birds. Within the human epidemiological literature this association is assumed to result from specific behaviour patterns causing changes in telomere dynamics. We argue that selective adoption-the hypothesis that individuals with short telomeres are more likely to adopt specific behaviours-is an alternative worthy of consideration. Selective adoption could occur either because telomere length directly affects behaviour or because behaviour and telomere length are both affected by a third variable, such as exposure to early-life adversity. We present differential predictions of the causation and selective adoption hypotheses and describe how these could be tested with longitudinal data on telomere length. Crucially, if behaviour is causal then it should be associated with differential rates of telomere attrition. Using smoking behaviour as an example, we show that the evidence that smoking accelerates the rate of telomere attrition within individuals is currently weak. We conclude that the selective adoption hypothesis for the association between behaviour and telomere length is both mechanistically plausible and, if anything, more compatible with existing empirical evidence than the hypothesis that behaviour is causal.This article is part of the theme issue 'Understanding diversity in telomere dynamics'.
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