A marker of biological age explains individual variation in the strength of the adult stress response.

ABSTRACT: The acute stress response functions to prioritize behavioural and physiological processes that maximize survival in the face of immediate threat. There is variation between individuals in the strength of the adult stress response that is of interest in both evolutionary biology and medicine. Age is an established source of this variation-stress responsiveness diminishes with increasing age in a range of species-but unexplained variation remains. Since individuals of the same chronological age may differ markedly in their pace of biological ageing, we asked whether biological age-measured here via erythrocyte telomere length-predicts variation in stress responsiveness in adult animals of the same chronological age. We studied two cohorts of European starlings in which we had previously mani

SUBMITTER: Andrews C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5627134 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature