Aging is associated with declines in an individual’s performance and breeding success, but how advanced parental age affects offspring viability and reproductive performance is less clear. In humans and some laboratory-reared organisms, there are well-established negative relationships between maternal age and offspring fitness. Life history theory, a major tenet of evolutionary biology, predicts similar trade-offs between maternal age and offspring fitness, but paradoxically also predicts that older females allocate more resources and energy into reproduction than do younger females, suggesting that offspring of older females are more (or equally as) fit as offspring of younger females.
With funding from the Knoebel Institute for Healthy Aging and in collaboration with Robin Tinghitella, we are testing whether and how advanced maternal age influences offspring fitness and immunocompetency. Our insect model allows us to investigate transgenerational effects of advanced maternal and grandmaternal age and to test epigenetic mechanisms, which will advance our understanding of how female aging affects offspring survival and reproductive success in natural populations.
Our first paper was just published and we have 3 more coming soon!
Wilson, J. D.*, S. C. Anner**, S. M. Murphy#, and R. M. Tinghitella#. 2020. Consequences of advanced maternal age on reproductive investment of male offspring. Journal of Orthoptera Research 29(1): 71-76.
# denotes shared last author
With funding from the Knoebel Institute for Healthy Aging and in collaboration with Robin Tinghitella, we are testing whether and how advanced maternal age influences offspring fitness and immunocompetency. Our insect model allows us to investigate transgenerational effects of advanced maternal and grandmaternal age and to test epigenetic mechanisms, which will advance our understanding of how female aging affects offspring survival and reproductive success in natural populations.
Our first paper was just published and we have 3 more coming soon!
Wilson, J. D.*, S. C. Anner**, S. M. Murphy#, and R. M. Tinghitella#. 2020. Consequences of advanced maternal age on reproductive investment of male offspring. Journal of Orthoptera Research 29(1): 71-76.
# denotes shared last author