ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2024
A future food boom rescues the negative effects of early-life adversity on adult lifespan in a small mammal.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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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.
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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
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cumulative Early-Life Adversities Predict Short- and Long-Term Survival in aEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Testing early life effects frameworks: developmental constraints and adaptive response hypotheses do not explain fertility outcomes in wild female baboons.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Population density and timing of breeding mediate effects of early life conditions on recruitment.Biology letters · 2025Article
- No evidence of early life resource pulse effects on age-specific variation in survival, reproduction and body mass of female Siberian flying squirrels.The Journal of animal ecology · 2024Article
- A future food boom rescues the negative effects of early-life adversity on adult lifespan in a small mammal.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Early-life adversity, even when transient, can have lasting effects on individual phenotypes and reduce lifespan across species. If these effects can be mitigated by a high-quality later-life environment, then differences in future resources may explain variable resilience to early-life adversity. Using data from over 1000 wild North American red squirrels, we tested the hypothesis that the costs of early-life adversity for adult lifespan could be offset by later-life food abundance. We identified six adversities that reduced juvenile survival in the first year of life, though only one-birth date-had continued independent effects on adult lifespan. We then built a weighted early-life adversity (wELA) index integrating the sum of adversities and their effect sizes. Greater weighted early-life adversity predicted shorter adult lifespans in males and females, but a naturally occurring food boom in the second year of life ameliorated this effect. Experimental food supplementation did not replicate this pattern, despite increasing lifespan, indicating that the buffering effect of a future food boom may hinge on more than an increase in available calories. Our results suggest a non-deterministic role of early-life conditions for later-life phenotype, highlighting the importance of evaluating the consequences of early-life adversity in the context of an animal's entire life course.
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Registered trials
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