Abstract
Early-life environmental conditions can provide a source of individual variation in life-history strategies and senescence patterns. Conditions experienced in early life can be quantified by measuring telomere length, which can act as a biomarker of survival probability in some species. Here, we investigate whether seasonal changes, weather conditions and group size are associated with early-life and/or early-adulthood telomere length in a wild population of European badgers (Meles meles). We found substantial intra-annual changes in telomere length during the first 3years of life, where within-individual effects showed shorter telomere lengths in the winter following the first spring and a trend for longer telomere lengths in the second spring compared to the first winter. In terms of weather conditions, cubs born in warmer, wetter springs with low rainfall variability had longer early-life (3-12months old) telomeres. Additionally, cubs born in groups with more cubs had marginally longer early-life telomeres, providing no evidence of resource constraint from cub competition. We also found that the positive association between early-life telomere length and cub survival probability remained when social and weather variables were included. Finally, after sexual maturity, in early adulthood (i.e., 12-36months) we found no significant association between same-sex adult group size and telomere length (i.e., no effect of intrasexual competition). Overall, we show that controlling for seasonal effects, which are linked to food availability, is important in telomere length analyses, and that variation in telomere length in badgers reflects early-life conditions and also predicts first year cub survival.
Highlights
We show that controlling for seasonal effects, which are linked to food availability, is important in telomere length analyses, and that variation in telomere length in badgers reflects early-life conditions and predicts first year cub survival. 38 Keywords: telomere length, early-life environment, group size, weather conditions, senescence, 39 season 40 41 1
The naturally averaged estimate for relative leukocyte telomere length (RLTL) in the plausible models was 0.366 and the 95% CIs of early-life RLTL overlapped between the models with and without ( = 0.386, 95% CI = 0.095 to 0.713, Table S11) early-life social and weather variables. 428 (iv) Same-sex group size effects on RLTL in early adulthood We found no evidence of same-sex adult group size effects on RLTL in early adulthood for females or males (Table S15). 432 4
Our results suggest that the link between early-life RLTL
Summary
Early-life environmental conditions can provide a source of individual variation in life-history strategies and senescence patterns. We investigate the relationships between early-life conditions and relative leukocyte telomere length (RLTL), by testing whether: (i) between-individual and within-individual variation in RLTL in early life and early adulthood can be explained by seasonal changes; (ii) adverse early-life weather, as a proxy for food availability and thermal stress, is associated with shorter early-life RLTL and the social conditions that cubs are exposed to (with more cubs potentially leading to resource competition and associated with shorter early-life RLTL, or more cubs reflecting more resources and being associated with longer early-life RLTL); (iii) the strength of the association between earlylife RLTL and first-year survival probability is dependent on early-life conditions and (iv) adverse social conditions after sexual maturity (i.e. larger same-sex adult group size for females and, for males, more within-group and neighbouring-group adult (>1 year old) males), are associated with shorter RLTL in early post-maturity adulthood
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