Causes and consequences of parental age effects on offspring quality

几十年前，兰辛表明，父母的生育年龄对后代的寿命有负面影响。这种“兰辛效应”已经在不同的分类群中得到了证明，尤其是在昆虫身上。然而，其最近的机制和生态意义仍不清楚。例如，年长父母的后代早逝是因为他们衰老得更快，还是他们在出生时就已经更虚弱了？父母的年龄效应是由于时间上的年龄还是生物年龄造成的，如果是这样，环境导致衰老的因素是否会对后代产生累积的影响？我们的项目试图确定兰辛效应如何将父母的衰老和后代的质量联系起来。我们将使用田野蟋蟀(其中兰辛效应最近已被证明)作为模型。我们将让父母暴露在高温或低温下，这将操纵生物年龄并使其与实际年龄脱钩，并调查对后代大小、生长速度和年龄相关死亡率的影响。我们还将通过检查生殖细胞中有希望的DNA完整性标记：8-OHdG、氧化损伤和端粒长度来确定导致生殖系恶化的潜在近端机制。我们的研究有可能从根本上改变我们对父母经历影响后代生活的机制的看法，为衰老过程和人类引发的环境变化的跨代影响提供关键见解。

Decades ago, Lansing showed that parental age at reproduction negatively affects offspring longevity. This "Lansing effect" has been demonstrated across taxa, and is particularly apparent in insects. However, both the proximate mechanisms and the ecological significance remain unclear. For example, do offspring of older parents die young because they age faster, or are they already frailer at birth? Are parental age effects due to chronological or biological age, and if so, do environmental causes of senescence have effects that accumulate in descendants? Our project seeks to establish how the Lansing effect links parental ageing, and offspring quality. We will use field crickets (in which the Lansing effect has recently been demonstrated) as a model. We will expose parents to high or low temperature which manipulates and decouples biological from chronological age and investigate the effects on offspring size, growth rate, and age-dependent mortality. We will also determine the underlying proximate mechanisms that cause deterioration in the germ line by examining promising markers of DNA integrity in germ cells; 8-OHdG, oxidative damage, and telomere length. Our study has the potential to radically shape our view of the mechanisms by which the experiences of parents can affect the lives of their descendants, providing key insights into the process of senescence and into trans-generational impacts of human-induced environmental change.