ArticleBiology letters2019
Birds with high lifetime reproductive success experience increased telomere loss.
Article in Biology letters, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Biogeographic cline is associated with the global plant telomere length variation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Reproductive Drivers of Temporal Telomere Dynamics in Female Tree Swallows.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Telomere Length at Recruitment Predicts Lifespan and Lifetime Reproductive Success in the Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica).Molecular ecology · 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
- Is Telomere Length Optimized in Hatchling Sand Lizards?Evolution & development · 2025Article
- Telomere-Related Gene Networks in the Ovary Shift Across Environmental Factors.Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological and integrative physiology · 2025Article
- Shrinking to bird size with dinosaur-level cancer defences: Evolution of cancer suppression over macroevolutionary time.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Telomere- and oxidative stress dynamics in Psittacidae species with different longevity trajectories.GeroScience · 2025Article
- Overcoming the pitfalls of categorizing continuous variables in ecology, evolution and behaviour.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Increased Reproductive Output and Telomere Shortening Following Calcium Supplementation in a Wild Songbird.Ecology 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
- Telomere length declines with age, but relates to immune function independent of age in a wild passerine.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Longer telomeres during early life predict higher lifetime reproductive success in females but not males.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Telomere lengths correlate with fitness but assortative mating by telomeres confers no benefit to fledgling recruitment.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Telomere attrition with age in a wild amphibian population.Biology letters · 2020Article
- Sex-specific telomere length and dynamics in relation to age and reproductive success in Cory's shearwaters.Molecular ecology · 2020Article
- Birds with high lifetime reproductive success experience increased telomere loss.Biology letters · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Lifetime reproductive success (LRS) is what counts in terms of evolution, but investments in reproduction entail costs for an organism. The idea that telomere dynamics may be shaped in response to such costs is already established; however, we still lack information on whether this relation translates to overall fitness. Here, we quantified LRS (number of fledged young) and longitudinal telomere dynamics of small passerine birds-the blue tits ( Cyanistes caeruleus). We found that individual telomere erosion rate was positively associated with lifetime fledgling number. Birds with more fledged young experienced increased telomere attrition. We show that telomere attrition rate, but not telomere length, is related to individual fitness and suggest that telomere dynamics may underlie reproductive costs experienced by animals as a consequence of prioritizing their lifetime fitness. This is the first study, to our knowledge, to provide evidence that more pronounced telomere erosion is associated with higher fitness gain.
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