Drivers of longitudinal telomere dynamics in the long-lived bat species, Myotis myotis

Age related telomere shortening is considered a hallmark of the ageing process. However, a recent cross-sectional ageing study of relative telomere length (rTL) in bats failed to detect a relationship between rTL and age in the long-lived genus Myotis (M. myotis and M. bechsteinii), suggesting some other factors are responsible for driving telomere dynamics in these species. Here, we test if longitudinal rTL data show signatures of age-associated telomere attrition in M. myotis and differentiate which intrinsic or extrinsic factors are likely to drive telomere length dynamics. Using qPCR, rTL was measured in 504 samples from a marked population, from Brittany, France, captured between 2013 and 2016. These represent 174 individuals with an age range of 0 to 7+ years. We find no significant relationship between rTL and age (p = 0.762), but demonstrate that within-individual rTL is highly variable from year to year. To investigate the heritability of rTL, a population pedigree (n=1744) was...