Telomere length reflects individual quality in free-living adult king penguins
| Type | Article | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | 2015-12 | ||||||||||||||||
| Language | English | ||||||||||||||||
| Author(s) | Le Vaillant Maryline1, 2, 3, Viblanc Vincent A.2, 3, 4, Saraux Claire5, Le Bohec Celine2, 3, 6, 7, Le Maho Yvon2, 3, Kato Akiko2, 3, Criscuolo Francois2, 3, Ropert-Coudert Yan2, 3 | ||||||||||||||||
| Affiliation(s) | 1 : Stockholm Univ, Dept Zool, S-10691 Stockholm, Sweden. 2 : Univ Strasbourg, Inst Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien, F-67087 Strasbourg 02, France. 3 : CNRS, UMR 7178, F-67037 Strasbourg 02, France. 4 : CNRS, Ctr Ecol Fonct & Evolut, F-34033 Montpellier, France. 5 : IFREMER, UMR MARBEC, F-34203 Sete, France. 6 : Ctr Sci Monaco, LIA BioSensib CSM CNRS 647, MC-98000 Monaco, Monaco. 7 : Univ Oslo, Dept Biosci, Ctr Ecol & Evolutionary Synth, N-0316 Oslo, Norway. |
||||||||||||||||
| Source | Polar Biology (0722-4060) (Springer), 2015-12 , Vol. 38 , N. 12 , P. 2059-2067 | ||||||||||||||||
| DOI | 10.1007/s00300-015-1766-0 | ||||||||||||||||
| WOS© Times Cited | 48 | ||||||||||||||||
| Keyword(s) | Breeding performances, Long-lived seabird, Natural antibody level, Body condition | ||||||||||||||||
| Abstract | Growing evidence suggests that telomeres, non-coding DNA sequences that shorten with age and stress, are related in an undefined way to individual breeding performances and survival rates in several species. Short telomeres and elevated shortening rates are typically associated with life stress and low health. As such, telomeres could serve as an integrative proxy of individual quality, describing the overall biological state of an individual at a given age. Telomere length could be associated with the decline of an array of physiological traits in age-controlled individuals. Here, we investigated the links between individuals' relative telomere length, breeding performance and various physiological (body condition, natural antibody levels) and life history (age, past breeding success) parameters in a long-lived seabird species, the king penguin Aptenodytes patagonicus. While we observed no link between relative telomere length and age, we found that birds with longer telomeres arrived earlier for breeding at the colony, and had higher breeding performances (i.e. the amount of time adults managed to maintain their chicks alive, and ultimately breeding success) than individuals with shorter telomeres. Further, we observed a positive correlation between telomere length and natural antibody levels. Taken together, our results add to the growing evidence that telomere length is likely to reflect individual quality difference in wild animal. | ||||||||||||||||
| Full Text |
|