ArticleEvolution & development2025
Is Telomere Length Optimized in Hatchling Sand Lizards?
Article in Evolution & development, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Is Telomere Length Optimized in Hatchling Sand Lizards?Evolution & development · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Telomeres (repeat-DNA-protein structures primarily located at the ends of chromosomes) protect coding DNA against attacks by reactive molecules and the cells' own DNA repair systems. If that capacity is costly, but enhances an individual's viability, we might expect to see natural selection acting on telomere length: that is, individuals with optimal telomere lengths should have higher lifetime reproductive success than conspecifics with shorter or longer telomeres. Some recent studies on humans broadly support that prediction, but no data are available for free-ranging ectothermic vertebrates that, unlike mammals, can facultatively adjust telomere length during an individual's lifetime. In our decade-long study of a natural population of sand lizards (Lacerta agilis), including measurement of 2736 telomeres across > 1700 hatchling lizards and their > 500 parents, but with a very high hatchling mortality reducing later-life sample sizes, we found that lifespan, lifetime reproductive success and offspring recruitment rate were highest for hatchlings with "average-length" telomeres. Hatchlings with shorter-than-average telomeres elongated their telomeres during juvenile life, attaining the population-average telomere length by the time of sexual maturity; but that compensatory telomere growth was associated with lower body condition.
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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.