Effects of early-life competition and maternal nutrition on telomere lengths in wild meerkats.

ABSTRACT: Early-life adversity can affect health, survival and fitness later in life, and recent evidence suggests that telomere attrition may link early conditions with their delayed consequences. Here, we investigate the link between early-life competition and telomere length in wild meerkats. Our results show that, when multiple females breed concurrently, increases in the number of pups in the group are associated with shorter telomeres in pups. Given that pups from different litters compete for access to milk, we tested whether this effect is due to nutritional constraints on maternal milk production, by experimentally supplementing females' diets during gestation and lactation. While control pups facing high competition had shorter telomeres, the negative effects of pup number on telomere leng

SUBMITTER: Cram DL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5577495 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature