Data from: Trait compensation and sex-specific aging of performance in male and female professional basketball players

Phenotypic traits are often influenced by dynamic resource allocation trade-offs which, when occurring over the course of individual lifespans, may manifest as trait aging. Although aging is studied for a variety of traits that are closely tied to reproduction or reproductive effort, the aging of multiple traits related to fitness in other ways are less well understood. We took advantage of almost 30 years of data on human whole-organism performance in the National Basketball Association (U.S.A.) to examine trends of aging in performance traits associated with scoring. Given that patterns of aging differ between sexes in other animal species, we also analysed a smaller dataset on players in the Women's National Basketball Association to test for potential sex differences in the aging of comparable traits. We tested the hypothesis that age-related changes in a specific aspect of overall performance can be compensated for by elevated expression of another, related aspect. Our analyses suggest that the aging of performance traits used in basketball is generally characterised by senescence in males, whereas age-related changes in basketball performance are less evident in females. Our data also indicate a different rate of senescence of different performance traits associated with scoring over a male's lifetime.

表型性状常受动态资源分配权衡的影响，若该权衡发生于个体寿命周期内，则可表现为性状衰老。尽管学界已针对诸多与繁殖或繁殖投入紧密相关的性状开展衰老研究，但对以其他途径与适合度（fitness）相关的多种性状的衰老机制，目前认知仍较为匮乏。我们借助美国国家篮球协会（National Basketball Association，简称NBA）近30年的人类全机体运动表现数据，探究与得分相关的运动表现性状的衰老趋势。鉴于其他动物物种中两性间的衰老模式存在差异，我们还分析了美国女子职业篮球联赛（Women's National Basketball Association，简称WNBA）选手的小型数据集，以检验同类性状衰老是否存在潜在的性别差异。我们验证了如下假说：整体运动表现某一特定维度的年龄相关变化，可通过另一相关维度的表达水平提升得到补偿。分析结果显示，男性篮球运动员的运动表现性状衰老普遍以衰老（senescence）为特征，而女性篮球运动员的运动表现所呈现的年龄相关变化则相对不显著。我们的数据还表明，男性运动员职业生涯中，与得分相关的不同运动表现性状的衰老速率存在差异。