Is telomere length a molecular marker of individual quality? Insights from a long-lived bird
Is telomere length a molecular marker of individual quality? Insights from a long-lived bird
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DOI：
10.1111/1365-2435.13307
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发表时间：
2019-06-01
影响因子：
5.2
通讯作者：
Chastel, Olivier
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Angelier, Frederic;Weimerskirch, Henri;Chastel, Olivier
在野生脊椎动物中，一些个体比其他个体生存和繁殖得更好，这导致了个体质量的概念。尽管衡量个体质量在研究生态过程和生命史权衡时很重要，但它很复杂，因为必须在个体生命的大部分时间里对其进行跟踪。最近，端粒生物学已成功地引入生态学，端粒长度被认为是评估野生脊椎动物个体质量的有前途的分子工具（“端粒个体质量假说”）。在这项研究中，我们通过在一年内同时测量端粒长度和个体质量的几个潜在互补表型代理，在长寿物种黑眉信天翁（Thalasarche melanophrys）中测试了这一假设。此外，我们对这些信天翁的回归率和繁殖性能进行了十年的跟踪。我们发现长端粒与高个体品质的几个标志物（觅食行为、体型和应激激素水平）相关。此外，我们发现端粒长度的单一测量可以预测未来后代的生产力，至少在端粒测量后的几年内（更好的生产力与更长的端粒相关）。总而言之，这些结果支持“端粒个体质量假说”，并表明端粒长度可用于估计长寿海鸟的个体质量。本文提供了通俗易懂的语言摘要。
In wild vertebrates, some individuals survive and reproduce better than others and this has led to the concept of individual quality. Despite its importance when studying ecological processes and life-history trade-offs, measuring individual quality is complex because individuals must be followed during a large part of their life. Recently, telomere biology has been successfully brought into ecology and telomere length has been suggested to be a promising molecular tool to evaluate individual quality in wild vertebrates ("the telomere-individual quality hypothesis"). In this study, we tested this hypothesis in a long-lived species, the black-browed albatross (Thalassarche melanophrys) by simultaneously measuring telomere length and several potential complementary phenotypic proxies of individual quality in a single year. In addition, we followed the return rate and the reproductive performance of these same albatrosses for a decade. We found that long telomeres were associated with several markers of high individual quality (foraging behaviour, body size and stress hormone levels). Furthermore, we found that a single measure of telomere length could predict future offspring productivity, for at least several years following telomere measurement (better productivity being associated with longer telomeres). Altogether, these results support the "telomere-individual quality hypothesis" and suggest that telomere length can be useful to estimate individual quality in long-lived seabirds. A plain language summary is available for this article.