SynthesisBMC biology2020
Mapping the past, present and future research landscape of paternal effects.
Synthesis in BMC biology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Paternal preconception modifiable risk factors for adverse pregnancy and offspring outcomes: a review of contemporary evidence from observational studies.BMC public health · 2023Pooled it
- Dietary restriction induces persistent multigenerational phenotypic effects in Phytoseiulus persimilis.Pest management science · 2026Article
- Exploring parental prenatal influences on child health: A multicohort study and data visualisation tool.PLoS medicine · 2026Article
- A scoping study of the whole-cell imaging literature as a foundation for the emerging field of cell anatomy.BMC biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Matching maternal and paternal experiences underpin molecular thermal acclimation.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- A scoping study of the whole-cell imaging literature: a foundational corpus, potential for mesoscale data synthesis, and implications for standardization of an emerging field.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Investigating the impact of paternal age, paternal heat stress, and estimation of non-genetic paternal variance on dairy cow phenotype.Genetics, selection, evolution : GSE · 2024Article
- Article
- Environmental and Genetic Traffic in the Journey from Sperm to Offspring.Biomolecules · 2023Review
- Fathers' preconception smoking and offspring DNA methylation.Clinical epigenetics · 2023Article
- Transgenerational effects on body size and survival in Brook charr (Evolutionary applications · 2023Article
- Evidence base for non-genetic inheritance of environmental exposures in non-human animals and plants: a map of evidence syntheses with bibliometric analysis.Environmental evidence · 2023Article
- On the Role of Seminal Fluid Protein and Nucleic Acid Content in Paternal Epigenetic Inheritance.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Article
- Separating the effects of paternal age and mating history: Evidence for sex-specific paternal effect in eastern mosquitofish.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2022Article
- Thermal regime during parental sexual maturation, but not during offspring rearing, modulates DNA methylation in brook charr (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Variable ambient temperature promotes song learning and production in zebra finches.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAlthough in all sexually reproducing organisms an individual has a mother and a father, non-genetic inheritance has been predominantly studied in mothers. Paternal effects have been far less frequently studied, until recently. In the last 5 years, research on environmentally induced paternal effects has grown rapidly in the number of publications and diversity of topics. Here, we provide an overview of this field using synthesis of evidence (systematic map) and influence (bibliometric analyses).
resultsWe find that motivations for studies into paternal effects are diverse. For example, from the ecological and evolutionary perspective, paternal effects are of interest as facilitators of response to environmental change and mediators of extended heredity. Medical researchers track how paternal pre-fertilization exposures to factors, such as diet or trauma, influence offspring health. Toxicologists look at the effects of toxins. We compare how these three research guilds design experiments in relation to objects of their studies: fathers, mothers and offspring. We highlight examples of research gaps, which, in turn, lead to future avenues of research.
conclusionsThe literature on paternal effects is large and disparate. Our study helps in fostering connections between areas of knowledge that develop in parallel, but which could benefit from the lateral transfer of concepts and methods.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.