Transgenerational maternal age effects in nature: Lessons learnt from Asian elephants

Abstract

In Focus Reichert, S., Berger, V., Jackson, J., Chapman, S. N., Htut, W., Mar, K. U., & Lummaa, V. (2019). Maternal age at birth shapes offspring life‐history trajectory across generations in long‐lived Asian elephants. Journal of Animal Ecology, 89, 996–1007. Parental age can have strong effects on offspring life history, but the prevalence and magnitude of such effects in natural populations remain poorly understood. Using a multigenerational dataset of semi‐captive Asian elephants, Reichert et al. (2019) studied the effects of maternal and grandmaternal age on offspring performance and found that offspring from old mothers have lower survival, but higher body condition and reproductive success than offspring from younger mothers. Importantly the observed consequences on survival are long‐lasting and span more than one generation, with grand‐offspring of old grandmothers also showing reduced survival. These findings suggest that persistent transgenerational effects of maternal age on fitness can shape the individual variation in ageing patterns in nature and ultimately the evolution of life histories.

How does early‐life adversity shape telomere dynamics during adulthood? Problems and paradigms

“…[ 106 ] Thus, several studies have also shown that early‐life adversity could trigger a slow pace rather than a fast pace of life in some species or under specific developmental constraints. [ 107 ] In addition, it has also been convincingly demonstrated that there may be an interactive effect of early‐life adversity and environmental conditions encountered during adulthood on the pace of life of organisms. [ 108 ] This suggests that the influence of early‐life adversity on adult telomere dynamics is likely to be mitigated or exacerbated by the severity and the type of early life adversity, by the variability of early‐life conditions, and by the environmental conditions that are encountered during adulthood, as stipulated in the non‐mutually exclusive Resilience hypothesis.…”