ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2018
The role of telomeres in the mechanisms and evolution of life-history trade-offs and ageing.
Review 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 76 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
76 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- The ageing holobiont: crosstalk between telomere dynamics, oxidative stress and the gut microbiome.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Telomere Length at Recruitment Predicts Lifespan and Lifetime Reproductive Success in the Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica).Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- The ageing holobiont: crosstalk between telomere dynamics, oxidative stress and the gut microbiome.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- The ageing holobiont: crosstalk between telomere dynamics, oxidative stress and the gut microbiome.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Plasma Proteome Signature for Leukocyte Telomere Length and Its Link to Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm.Journal of cellular and molecular medicine · 2026Article
- Short- and long-term costs of reproduction revealed by telomere dynamics in wild greater horseshoe bats.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Topsicle: a method for estimating telomere length from whole genome long-read sequencing data.Genome biology · 2025Article
- Chromosome-length genome assembly ofbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- A short-lived fish with long-lasting effects: hallmarks of aging inFrontiers in aging · 2025Review
- Cell Immortality:Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- No effect of testosterone or sexual ornamentation on telomere dynamics: A case study and meta-analyses.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Sex and early-life conditions shape telomere dynamics in an ectotherm.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- A unified framework for evolutionary genetic and physiological theories of aging.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- A unified framework for evolutionary genetic and physiological theories of aging.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- A unified framework for evolutionary genetic and physiological theories of aging.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Why and when should organisms elongate their telomeres? Elaborations on the 'excess resources elongation' and 'last resort elongation' hypotheses.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- No end in sight: Mysteries of the telomeric variation in plants.American journal of botany · 2023Article
- Hibernation telomere dynamics in a shifting climate: insights from wild greater horseshoe bats.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- The shelterin protein expansion of telomere dynamics: Linking early life adversity, life history, and the hallmarks of aging.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
16 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
Evolutionary biology and biomedicine have seen a surge of recent interest in the possibility that telomeres play a role in life-history trade-offs and ageing. Here, I evaluate alternative hypotheses for the role of telomeres in the mechanisms and evolution of life-history trade-offs and ageing, and highlight outstanding challenges. First, while recent findings underscore the possibility of a proximate causal role for telomeres in current-future trade-offs and ageing, it is currently unclear (i) whether telomeres ever play a causal role in either and (ii) whether any causal role for telomeres arises via shortening or length-independent mechanisms. Second, I consider why, if telomeres do play a proximate causal role, selection has not decoupled such a telomere-mediated trade-off between current and future performance. Evidence suggests that evolutionary constraints have not rendered such decoupling impossible. Instead, a causal role for telomeres would more plausibly reflect an adaptive strategy, born of telomere maintenance costs and/or a function for telomere attrition (e.g. in countering cancer), the relative importance of which is currently unclear. Finally, I consider the potential for telomere biology to clarify the constraints at play in life-history evolution, and to explain the form of the current-future trade-offs and ageing trajectories that we observe today.This article is part of the theme issue 'Understanding diversity in telomere dynamics'.
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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.