Data from: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Effects of paternal age at conception on fathers and sons

Advancing male age is often hypothesised to reduce both, male fertility
and offspring quality due to reproductive senescence. However, the effects
of advancing male age on reproductive output and offspring quality are not
always deleterious. For example, older fathers might buffer effects of
reproductive senescence by terminally investing in reproduction.
Similarly, males that survive to reproduce at an old age, might carry
alleles that confer high viability (viability selection) which are then
inherited by offspring, or might have high reproductive potential
(selective disappearance). Differentiating these mechanisms requires an
integrated experimental study of paternal survival and reproductive
performance, as well as offspring quality, which is currently lacking.
Using a cross-sectional study in Drosophila melanogaster, we test the
effects of paternal age at conception (PAC) on paternal survival and
reproductive success, and on the lifespans of sons. We discover that
mating at an old age is linked with decreased future male survival,
suggesting that mating-induced mortality is possibly due to old fathers
being frail. We find no evidence for terminal investment, and show that
reproductive senescence in fathers does not onset until their late-adult
life. Additionally, we find that as a father’s lifespan increases, his
probability of siring offspring increases, for older PAC treatments only.
Lastly, we show that sons born to older fathers live longer than those
born to younger fathers, due to viability selection. Collectively, our
results suggest that advancing paternal age is not necessarily associated
with deleterious effects for offspring, and may even lead to older fathers
producing longer-lived offspring.