WEES Seminar: Understanding senescence and trans-generational parental age effects in a long-lived seabird

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WEES Seminar: Understanding senescence and trans-generational parental age effects in a long-lived seabird

Dr. Sandra Bouwhuis
Institute of Avian Research, Wilhelmshaven, Germany
 

Birds, in comparison to mammals, are relatively long lived for their size and were once thought to largely escape senescence. As longitudinal studies have accumulated, it has, however, become clear that many avian traits show signs of late-life deterioration. In addition, there is increasing evidence for transgenerational effects, with offspring from older parents achieving a reduced lifetime reproductive success. From an evolutionary point of view, trans-generational parental age effects can arise from a resource‐based trade‐off between survival and reproduction, i.e. from disposable soma. Mechanistically, compromised germline maintenance in old parents may lead to reduced telomere length or increased levels of de novo mutations in offspring. Alternatively, or additionally, inheritance of epigenetic alterations to gene expression may underlie trans-generational effects of parental age. In this talk, I will (i) summarise general results from longitudinal studies on avian senescence, (ii) specifically describe the ageing process in a long-lived seabird, the common tern (Sterna hirundo) and (iii) discuss my group’s work on telomere length, de novo mutation and DNA methylation as potential mechanisms underlying our recently bserved sex-specific trans-generational parental age effects in common terns. .

The seminar will be hosted on zoom and the seminar can be accessed via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85049075701

Additionally, the link to the seminar will be posted online on our website (www.weeswageningen.nl) in the week of the seminar. If you experience any problems with accessing the seminar, please contact us at weeswageningen@gmail.com..

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WEES background & call for new members
WEES is an initiative of PhD students and postdocs at Wageningen University to organize a continuing series of stimulating seminars on contemporary topics in evolution and ecology. For this series we invite researchers from all over the world who have leading roles in their field. We aim to bring together different groups at Wageningen University using a variety of systems, but with a common interest in evolutionary and ecological questions. WEES is funded by graduate schools PE&RC, WIMEK, EPS, VLAG, and WIAS.

Interested in joining the WEES committee and organizing seminars yourself? WEES is looking for new members! We aim for a broad and diverse range in topics and would like to welcome new members to help and include topics not represented yet. If you are curious, send an email to weeswageningen@gmail.com and join one of our meetings.

For more information please visit: www.weeswageningen.nl, Like us on Facebook, or join the Facebook Group for more participation.