Silver-spoon upbringing improves early-life fitness but promotes reproductive ageing in a wild bird

Spagopoulou, Foteini, Teplitsky, Céline, Lind, Martin I., Chantepie, Stéphane, Gustafsson, Lars and Maklakov, Alexei A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5809-1203 (2020) Silver-spoon upbringing improves early-life fitness but promotes reproductive ageing in a wild bird. Ecology Letters, 23 (6). pp. 994-1002. ISSN 1461-023X

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Abstract

Early-life conditions can have long-lasting effects and organisms that experience a poor start in life are often expected to age at a faster rate. Alternatively, individuals raised in high-quality environments can overinvest in early-reproduction resulting in rapid ageing. Here we use a long-term experimental manipulation of early-life conditions in a natural population of collared flycatchers (Ficedula albicollis), to show that females raised in a low-competition environment (artificially reduced broods) have higher early-life reproduction but lower late-life reproduction than females raised in high-competition environment (artificially increased broods). Reproductive success of high-competition females peaked in late-life, when low-competition females were already in steep reproductive decline and suffered from a higher mortality rate. Our results demonstrate that ‘silver-spoon’ natal conditions increase female early-life performance at the cost of faster reproductive ageing and increased late-life mortality. These findings demonstrate experimentally that natal environment shapes individual variation in reproductive and actuarial ageing in nature.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: ageing,brood size manipulation,condition dependence,disposable soma theory,early-life conditions,senescence,‘silver-spoon’ theory,survival,population,brood size manipulation,model,sexual selection,'silver-spoon' theory,evolution,senescence,traits,age,history,ecology, evolution, behavior and systematics ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1100/1105
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Organisms and the Environment
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Norwich Institute for Healthy Aging
Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
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Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 22 Apr 2020 14:41
Last Modified: 03 Dec 2024 01:26
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/74827
DOI: 10.1111/ele.13501

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