10.5061/DRYAD.DR7SQV9WR
van Lieshout, Sil H.J.
0000-0003-4136-265X
University of Leeds
Sparks, Alexandra M.
University of Leeds
Bretman, Amanda
University of Leeds
Newman, Chris
University of Oxford
Buesching, Christina D.
University of Oxford
Burke, Terry
University of Sheffield
Macdonald, David W.
University of Oxford
Dugdale, Hannah L.
University of Leeds
Estimation of environmental, genetic and parental age at conception
effects on telomere length in a wild mammal
Dryad
dataset
2020
Telomere length
parental age at conception
wild mammal
2020-10-12T00:00:00Z
2020-10-12T00:00:00Z
en
254654 bytes
2
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Understanding individual variation in fitness-related traits requires
separating the environmental and genetic determinants. Telomeres are
protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that are thought to be a
biomarker of senescence as their length predicts mortality risk and
reflect the physiological consequences of environmental conditions. The
relative contribution of genetic and environmental factors to individual
variation in telomere length is however unclear, yet important for
understanding its evolutionary dynamics. In particular, the evidence for
transgenerational effects, in terms of parental age at conception, on
telomere length is mixed. Here, we investigate the heritability of
telomere length, using the ‘animal model’, and parental age at conception
effects on offspring telomere length in a wild population of European
badgers (Meles meles). While we found no heritability of telomere length
and low evolvability (<0.001), our power to detect heritability was
low and a repeatability of 2% across individual lifetimes provides a low
upper limit to ordinary narrow-sense heritability. However, year (25%) and
cohort (3%) explained greater proportions of the phenotypic variance in
telomere length. There was no support for cross-sectional or
within-individual parental age at conception effects on offspring telomere
length. Our results indicate a lack of transgenerational effects through
parental age at conception and a low potential for evolutionary change in
telomere length in this population. Instead, we provide evidence that
individual variation in telomere length is largely driven by environmental
variation in this wild mammal.