Data from: Hidden costs of infection: chronic malaria accelerates telomere degradation and senescence in wild birds

Recovery from infection is not always complete, and mild chronic infection may persist. Although the direct costs of such infections are apparently small, the potential for any long-term effects on Darwinian fitness is poorly understood. In a wild population of great reed warblers, we found that low-level chronic malaria infection reduced life span as well as the lifetime number and quality of offspring. These delayed fitness effects of malaria appear to be mediated by telomere degradation, a result supported by controlled infection experiments on birds in captivity. The results of this study imply that chronic infection may be causing a series of small adverse effects that accumulate and eventually impair phenotypic quality and Darwinian fitness.

感染后的恢复并非总能完全完成，轻度慢性感染可能持续存在。尽管此类感染的直接代价看似微小，但其对达尔文适合度（Darwinian fitness）产生长期影响的潜力，目前尚未得到充分认知。我们在大苇莺（great reed warbler）的野生种群中开展研究，发现低度慢性疟疾感染会缩短宿主寿命，同时降低其一生的后代数量与后代质量。此类疟疾引发的适合度延迟损害效应，似乎通过端粒降解（telomere degradation）介导，这一结论得到了圈养鸟类可控感染实验的支持。本研究结果表明，慢性感染可能引发一系列逐步累积的微小不良效应，最终损害宿主的表型质量（phenotypic quality）与达尔文适合度。