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Sex differences in telomere selection in the wild

Författare

  • Mats Olsson
  • Angela Pauliny
  • Erik Wapstra
  • Tobias Uller
  • Tonia Schwartz
  • Donald Blomqvist

Summary, in English

Telomere length is restored primarily through the action of the reverse transcriptase telomerase, which may contribute to a prolonged lifespan in some but not all species and may result in longer telomeres in one sex than the other. To what extent this is an effect of proximate mechanisms (e.g. higher stress in males, higher oestradiol/oestrogen levels in females), or is an evolved adaptation (stronger selection for telomere length in one sex), usually remains unknown. Sand lizard (Lacerta agilis) females have longer telomeres than males and better maintain telomere length through life than males do. We also show that telomere length more strongly contributes to life span and lifetime reproductive success in females than males and that telomere length is under sexually diversifying selection in the wild. Finally, we performed a selection analysis with number of recruited offspring into the adult population as a response variable with telomere length, life span and body size as predictor variables. This showed significant differences in selection pressures between the sexes with strong ongoing selection in females, with these three predictors explaining 63% of the variation in recruitment. Thus, the sexually dimorphic telomere dynamics with longer telomeres in females is a result of past and ongoing selection in sand lizards. Finally, we compared the results from our selection analyses based on Telometric-derived data to the results based on data generated by the software ImageJ. ImageJ resulted in shorter average telomere length, but this difference had virtually no qualitative effect on the patterns of ongoing selection.

Publiceringsår

2011

Språk

Engelska

Sidor

2085-2099

Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie

Molecular Ecology

Volym

20

Issue

10

Dokumenttyp

Artikel i tidskrift

Förlag

Wiley-Blackwell

Ämne

  • Biological Sciences

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt

  • ISSN: 0962-1083