The association between female reproductive performance and leukocyte telomere length in wild Soay sheep.
The association between female reproductive performance and leukocyte telomere length in wild Soay sheep.
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野生索伊羊雌性繁殖性能与白细胞端粒长度的关系。
DOI：
10.1111/mec.16175
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发表时间：
2022
影响因子：
4.9
通讯作者：
Ravindran S
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Ravindran S
端粒长度（TL）通常是在血细胞样本中测量的，在进化生态学中，它已经成为生理状态以及生长和繁殖投资成本的一个令人兴奋的潜在标记。尽管越来越多的野生脊椎动物研究证据表明，较短的TL会增加随后的死亡风险，但生殖投资与TL之间的关系不太明确，之前的研究报告了负相关和正相关。在这项研究中，我们在一个自由生活的Soay羊群体中研究了TL与母系生殖性能的关系。我们发现有证据表明，与没有生育的雌性相比，生育过的雌性的TL更短，因此付出了任何妊娠成本。然而，我们没有发现TL与产仔数之间存在任何关联的证据。此外，投入妊娠和哺乳的雌性实际上比只投入妊娠的雌性寿命更长，因为它们的后代在出生后不久就死亡了。我们使用多变量模型将这些关联分解为个体间效应和个体内效应，发现个体内效应既驱动了TL与妊娠之间的负相关，也驱动了TL与泌乳之间的正相关。这表明端粒动力学可能反映了最近生理上昂贵的投资或生理条件的变化，这取决于正在研究的生殖方面。我们的研究结果强调了脊椎动物繁殖的生理复杂性，以及更好地理解支撑生活史的生理变异的不同方面如何以及为什么影响血细胞TL的必要性。
Telomere length (TL), typically measured across a sample of blood cells, has emerged as an exciting potential marker of physiological state and of the costs of investment in growth and reproduction within evolutionary ecology. While there is mounting evidence from studies of wild vertebrates that short TL predicts raised subsequent mortality risk, the relationship between reproductive investment and TL is less clear cut, and previous studies report both negative and positive associations. In this study, we examined the relationship between TL and different aspects of maternal reproductive performance in a free‐living population of Soay sheep. We find evidence for shorter TL in females that bred, and thus paid any costs of gestation, compared to females that did not breed. However, we found no evidence for any association between TL and litter size. Furthermore, females that invested in gestation and lactation actually had longer TL than females who only invested in gestation because their offspring died shortly after birth. We used multivariate models to decompose these associations into among‐ and within‐individual effects, and discovered that within‐individual effects were driving both the negative association between TL and gestation, and the positive association between TL and lactation. This suggests that telomere dynamics may reflect recent physiologically costly investment or variation in physiological condition, depending on the aspect of reproduction being investigated. Our results highlight the physiological complexity of vertebrate reproduction, and the need to better understand how and why different aspects of physiological variation underpinning life histories impact blood cell TL.