Ageing and trans-generational effects

Ageing


All organisms age, yet it is a bit of an evolutionary oddity. Any organisms that could potentially overcome senescence would have an immense evolutionary advantage – it would be a Darwinian deamon. We study the evolutionary basis of these traits.

We use quantitative genetic methods for this.  It is important to look at longitudinal effects over cross-sectional effects, and the methods we use for this are powerful to uncover hidden patterns in data. 


Trans-generational effects of age and stress

Yet, even wild populations age. In some cases, there is even trans-generational ageing –where offspring of parents that reproduced at a late age have lower fitness than their siblings born earlier. This is puzzeling, and we still do not really know how this works, or what the evolutionary implications are.

Stress can act similarly to age – and stress in early stages of development – or even stress in parents – can severely affect the offsprings fitness. We have shown before that noise affects offspring survival through reduced parental care. We are currently studying the effects of are and noise on in-ove development, using biomarkers such as telomeres and small RNA. 

Papers

Chik HYJ, Sibma A, Mannarelli ME, dos Remedios N, Simons MJP, Burke T, Schroeder J. Heritability and age-dependent changes in genetic variation of telomere length in a wild house sparrow population. EcoEvoRxiv. https://doi.org/10.32942/X2T01F

Chik HYJ, Sparks A, Schroeder J, Dugdale H. A meta-analysis on the heritability of vertebrate telomere length. J Evol Biol, https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.14071. 

Bennett S, Girndt A, Sánchez-Tójar A, Burke T, Simons M, Schroeder J. 2022. Evidence of paternal effects on telomere length increases in early-life. Front. Genet. 13:880455. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2022.880455


Matsushima W, Brink K, Schroeder J, Miska E, Gapp K (2019) Mature sperm small RNA profile in the sparrow:  implications for transgenerational effects of age on fitness. Environmental Epigenetics, 5, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1093/eep/dvz007

Girndt A, Cockburn G, Sánchez Tójar A, Hertel M, Burke T, Schroeder J 2019. Male age and its association with reproductive traits in captive and wild house sparrows. Journal for Evolutionary Biology. 32(12), 1432–1443. https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.13542 


Girndt A, Cockburn G, Sanchez-Tojar A, Lovelie H, Schroeder J. 2017. Methods matter: experimental evidence for shorter avian sperm in faecal compared to abdominal massage samples. Plos ONE 12(8): e0182853. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0182853

Hsu Y-H, Schroeder J, Simons MJP, Winney I, Burke T, Nakagawa S. 2017. Age-dependent trajectories differ between within-pair and extra-pair paternity success. J. Evol. Biol. 30, 951­–959. https://doi.org/10.1111/jeb.13058

Schroeder J, Rees M, Nakagawa S, Burke T. 2015. Reduced fitness in progeny from old parents in a wild population. PNAS 112, 4021-4025. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1422715112

Simons MJP, Winney I, Girndt, A, Rees M, Nakagawa S, Burke T, Schroeder J. 2015. Ageing in house sparrows is insensitive to environmental effects. bioRxiv. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/598284. 


Schroeder J, Nakagawa S, Cleasby IR, Burke T 2012. Passerine birds breeding under chronic noise experience reduced fitness. PLoS ONE 7, e39200.

Schroeder J, Burke T, Dawson DA, Mannarelli ME, Nakagawa S 2012. Maternal effects and the heritability of annual productivity. J. Evol. Biol. 25, 149–156. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2011.02412.x