PARENTAL AGE EFFECTS · Epigenetic transgenerational Effects of Parental Age on Fitness
FP7 — People (Marie Curie Actions)
- Duration
- 2013-08-01 → 2017-07-31
- EU contribution
- €100,000
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MC-CIG
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Epigenetic transgenerational Effects of Parental Age on Fitness
Reproducing at old age is known to incur costs such as an increased risk of polysomy, higher infant and maternal mortality ect. One often-overlooked cost of late reproduction could come from transgenerationally inherited effects of old age on the lifespan or fertility of the next generation. Such transgenerational, epigenetic effects are likely important for our understanding of the evolution of costs of late reproduction if the effect is reliably inherited by future generations. Such an effect was first described by Alexander Graham Bell. The negative influence of parental age on offspring fitness has been observed in many taxa in the laboratory (coined the “Lansing effect”), and also in humans. However, it has never been shown in the wild, likely because studying transgenerational effects of age on the fitness of offspring requires an exact knowledge of parental age and of the fate of offspring – data that are difficult to gather in natural populations. Here we demonstrate in a natural, pedigreed population of house sparrows that parental ages have a negative effect on lifetime reproductive fitness. In a long-term cross-fostering experiment, we demonstrate that this transgenerational Lansing effect is not environmentally induced, but matrilineally inherited. Our study reveals hidden consequences of late-life reproduction that unexpectedly persist into the second generation, which potentially affects the evolution of ageing and lifespan. (Schroeder et al. 2015, PNAS).
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Why do organisms age? This is one of the big, unsolved questions in biology, because it is unclear how a process that decreases fitness can persist evolutionarily, and why species do not evolve to live longer. Many evolutionary theories have been suggested to explain, but it is likely that multiple factors contribute to the phenomenon. One potentially very important factor has been largely ignored: transgenerational epigenetic effects of senescence. Epigenetic effects can strongly affect the predictions of evolutionary models. One such epigenetic, trans-generational factor that affects fitness is parental age. It has been known for nearly a century that a mother's age can affect her offspring's, and even her grand- offspring's fitness. However, all studies have been done in the laboratory. Therefore, it is unknown whether the effect of parental age operates in wild populations, and how it contributes to our understanding of the evolution of longevity.We propose to study the effects of parental and grand-parental age on their offspring's lifespan, reproductive success, physiology and genetics in a wild population of house sparrows. We have data available from a long-term study of sparrows in which we will examine these topics in detail. Only a closed population such as the one that we is uniquely suited for this study, as we can accurately estimate lifespan, fitness and parentage, which are all prerequisites for the longitudinal study of longevity on individual fitness. Also, we will use focused experiments with captive birds to cement our hypotheses, and individual-based simulation models to explore the implications of parental age effects on the evolution of longevity.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER WISSENSCHAFTEN EV · MUNCHENCoordinatorGermany
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union