scholarly journals Maternal and paternal age effects on male antler flies: a field experiment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Angell ◽  
Rebecca Janacek ◽  
Howard D. Rundle
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zac Wylde ◽  
Foteini Spagopoulou ◽  
Amy K Hooper ◽  
Alexei A Maklakov ◽  
Russell Bonduriansky

Individuals within populations vary enormously in mortality risk and longevity, but the causes of this variation remain poorly understood. A potentially important and phylogenetically widespread source of such variation is maternal age at breeding, which typically has negative effects on offspring longevity. Here, we show that paternal age can affect offspring longevity as strongly as maternal age does, and that breeding age effects can interact over two generations in both matrilines and patrilines. We manipulated maternal and paternal ages at breeding over two generations in the neriid fly Telostylinus angusticollis. To determine whether breeding age effects can be modulated by the environment, we also manipulated larval diet and male competitive environment in the first generation. We found separate and interactive effects of parental and grandparental ages at breeding on descendants’ mortality rate and lifespan in both matrilines and patrilines. These breeding age effects were not modulated by grandparental larval diet quality or competitive environment. Our findings suggest that variation in maternal and paternal ages at breeding could contribute substantially to intra-population variation in mortality and longevity.


1966 ◽  
Vol 112 (490) ◽  
pp. 899-905 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. L. Granville-Grossman

Reports that schizophrenics have older parents than non-schizophrenics (Barry, 1945; Goodman, 1957; Johanson, 1958; Gregory, 1959) are of considerable importance. If valid, they provide evidence for environmental causes of schizophrenia, and by analogy with other conditions where parental age effects have been noted may give some indication of the nature of these causes. There are, however, inconsistencies in these studies: thus Johanson and Gregory found a significant association between advanced paternal age and schizophrenia, but failed to confirm the maternal age effect noted by Barry and Goodman. These differences indicate the need for further investigation and this paper describes such a study.


2019 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathieu Simard ◽  
Catherine Laprise ◽  
Simon L Girard

Abstract BACKGROUND The effect of maternal age at conception on various aspects of offspring health is well documented and often discussed. We seldom hear about the paternal age effect on offspring health, although the link is now almost as solid as with maternal age. The causes behind this, however, are drastically different between males and females. CONTENT In this review article, we will first examine documented physiological changes linked to paternal age effect. We will start with all morphological aspects of the testis that have been shown to be altered with aging. We will then move on to all the parameters of spermatogenesis that are linked with paternal age at conception. The biggest part of this review will focus on genetic changes associated with paternal age effects. Several studies that have established a strong link between paternal age at conception and the rate of de novo mutations will be reviewed. We will next discuss paternal age effects associated with telomere length and try to better understand the seemingly contradictory results. Finally, severe diseases that affect brain functions and normal development have been associated with older paternal age at conception. In this context, we will discuss the cases of autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia, as well as several childhood cancers. SUMMARY In many Western civilizations, the age at which parents have their first child has increased substantially in recent decades. It is important to summarize major health issues associated with an increased paternal age at conception to better model public health systems.


Science ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 301 (5633) ◽  
pp. 606-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F. Crow
Keyword(s):  

2016 ◽  
pp. ddw328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Atsem ◽  
Juliane Reichenbach ◽  
Ramya Potabattula ◽  
Marcus Dittrich ◽  
Caroline Nava ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1862) ◽  
pp. 20171562 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben C. Arslan ◽  
Kai P. Willführ ◽  
Emma M. Frans ◽  
Karin J. H. Verweij ◽  
Paul-Christian Bürkner ◽  
...  

Higher paternal age at offspring conception increases de novo genetic mutations. Based on evolutionary genetic theory we predicted older fathers' children, all else equal, would be less likely to survive and reproduce, i.e. have lower fitness. In sibling control studies, we find support for negative paternal age effects on offspring survival and reproductive success across four large populations with an aggregate N > 1.4 million. Three populations were pre-industrial (1670–1850) Western populations and showed negative paternal age effects on infant survival and offspring reproductive success. In twentieth-century Sweden, we found minuscule paternal age effects on survival, but found negative effects on reproductive success. Effects survived tests for key competing explanations, including maternal age and parental loss, but effects varied widely over different plausible model specifications and some competing explanations such as diminishing paternal investment and epigenetic mutations could not be tested. We can use our findings to aid in predicting the effect increasingly older parents in today's society will have on their children's survival and reproductive success. To the extent that we succeeded in isolating a mutation-driven effect of paternal age, our results can be understood to show that de novo mutations reduce offspring fitness across populations and time periods.


F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 358
Author(s):  
Johannes Lawen ◽  
Ena Wang

This paper presents a computational model for simulating the propagation of de novo mutations and paternal age effects in populations. The model uses data for paternal de novo mutation rates depending on age and demographic data such as age distributions, birth distributions versus age, varying life expectancy, and correlations with fertility. The number of paternal de novo mutations in children increases with the paternal age at conception. This might be of interest considering that the average paternal age has risen significantly in many societies throughout the last century. The model introduced below can superimpose and extrapolate different effects based on demographic dynamics. This includes the assessment of statistically associated neurological disorders in offspring, particularly IQ decay depending on the paternal age and other medical phenotypes which constitute paternal age effects. Yearly paternal mutation rates and correlations with paternal age were used to simulate both, de novo mutation propagation and probabilities for correlating conditions such as IQ decay. The extrapolated effect after several generations of persistently elevated paternal age appears to be drastic. To account for possibly mitigating factors, the paternal age effect has been super-positioned with the Flynn effect in simulated cases. The model automatically generates distributions for varying paternal ages, not just single cases, in convenient 3D distributions. The model simulates each person’s individual reproductive incidents through a particle type approach which is more rigorous than insufficiently adaptive, continuum models based on partial differential equations. The model is not only applicable to humans and yields many valuable conclusions for a wide array of topics including the paternal age effect, correlations with intelligence, evolution, bottlenecks in evolution, as well as the role of de novo mutation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Cope ◽  
Edward Ivimey-Cook ◽  
Jacob Moorad

AbstractParental age at reproduction influences offspring size and survival by affecting prenatal and postnatal conditions in a wide variety of species, including humans. However, most investigations into this manifestation of ageing focus upon maternal age effects; the effects of paternal age and interactions between maternal and paternal age are often neglected. Furthermore, even when maternal age effects are studied, pre- and postnatal effects are confounded. Using a cross-fostered experimental design, we investigated the joint effects of paternal and pre- and postnatal maternal ages on numerous offspring outcomes in a laboratory population of a species of burying beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides. When we correct our tests for significance for multiple comparisons, we found no clear evidence for any parental effect senescence acting on egg size, larval weight, or larval survival. Nor did we find a statistical effect of paternal or egg producer age on the outcomes of foster mothers as measured by weight change experienced during caregiving. These findings are consistent with recent negative results reported in a similar study of N. vespilloides maternal age effects while also expanding these to other offspring traits and to paternal age effects. We discuss how the peculiar life history of this species may promote selection to resist the evolution of parental age effects, and how this might have influenced our ability to detect senescence.


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