ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2018
The rate of telomere loss is related to maximum lifespan in birds.
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 58 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
58 citing papers in PubMed.
- Telomere Length at Recruitment Predicts Lifespan and Lifetime Reproductive Success in the Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica).Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Mechanistic redundancy and hierarchy of aging mechanisms: implications for strategies to extend healthspan and biomarker integration.Frontiers in aging · 2026Review
- Multispecies pangenomes reveal a pervasive influence of population size on structural variation.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- No Evidence That Life History Strategies Shape Within-Body Mosaics of Ageing.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Unlocking longevity through the comparative biology of aging.Nature aging · 2025Review
- Among-population variation in telomere regulatory proteins and their potential role as hidden drivers of intraspecific variation in life history.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Among-population variation in telomere regulatory proteins and their potential role as hidden drivers of intraspecific variation in life history.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Among-population variation in telomere regulatory proteins and their potential role as hidden drivers of intraspecific variation in life history.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Why the superb physiological capacity of birds matters.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Great Tit (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Roles of chromatin and genome instability in cellular senescence and their relevance to ageing and related diseases.Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology · 2024Review
- Fundamental equations linking methylation dynamics to maximum lifespan in mammals.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Telomere length is longer following diapause in two solitary bee species.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Does Effective Population Size Govern Evolutionary Differences in Telomere Length?Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Pleiotropic effects of melanin pigmentation: haemoparasite infection intensity but not telomere length is associated with plumage morph in black sparrowhawks.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Early-life telomere length predicts life-history strategy and reproductive senescence in a threatened wild songbird.Molecular ecology · 2023Article
- Temperature-independent telomere lengthening with age in the long-lived human fish (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Longitudinal telomere dynamics within natural lifespans of a wild bird.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- The association between sleep quality and telomere length: A systematic literature review.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2023Review
- An approach to the effects of longevity, sexual maturity, and reproduction on telomere length and oxidative stress in different Psittacidae species.Frontiers in genetics · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
26 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Telomeres are highly conserved regions of DNA that protect the ends of linear chromosomes. The loss of telomeres can signal an irreversible change to a cell's state, including cellular senescence. Senescent cells no longer divide and can damage nearby healthy cells, thus potentially placing them at the crossroads of cancer and ageing. While the epidemiology, cellular and molecular biology of telomeres are well studied, a newer field exploring telomere biology in the context of ecology and evolution is just emerging. With work to date focusing on how telomere shortening relates to individual mortality, less is known about how telomeres relate to ageing rates across species. Here, we investigated telomere length in cross-sectional samples from 19 bird species to determine how rates of telomere loss relate to interspecific variation in maximum lifespan. We found that bird species with longer lifespans lose fewer telomeric repeats each year compared with species with shorter lifespans. In addition, phylogenetic analysis revealed that the rate of telomere loss is evolutionarily conserved within bird families. This suggests that the physiological causes of telomere shortening, or the ability to maintain telomeres, are features that may be responsible for, or co-evolved with, different lifespans observed across species.This article is part of the theme issue 'Understanding diversity in telomere dynamics'.
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