Purple Crowned Fairy Wren Telomere dynamics and lifespan

In our longitudinal study, we examined life-long telomere dynamics in wild purple crowned fairy wrens (<i>Malurus coronatus coronatus</i>) from early life (the time of near complete skeletal growth (age seven days)) and at various points thereafter (~ one to ten years of age). Purple crowned fairy wrens are cooperatively breeding birds that are highly philopatric with a maximum recorded lifespan of 14 years (Peters, unpublished data). We focus our work on the threatened, western sub-species that is restricted to riparian vegetation dominated by <i>Pandanus aquaticus</i> the tropical savannahs of far-north Western Australia. We utilised a high-quality, long-term dataset (&gt;15 years) including lifespan and complete life-history information for several cohorts. These data enabled us to examine the relationship between telomere length, rates of telomere shortening at different life stages and individual lifespan. Our approach involved a within-subject centering analyses (using delta and average age) that allowed us to simultaneously test the association of lifespan with telomere length and telomere dynamics.

本项纵向研究中，我们对野生紫冠细尾鹩莺（*Malurus coronatus coronatus*）从生命早期（接近完全骨骼发育的7日龄阶段）直至后续多个时间节点（约1~10岁）的终生端粒（telomere）动态变化展开了研究。紫冠细尾鹩莺为合作繁殖鸟类，具有高度恋出生地的习性，目前记录到的最长寿命为14年（Peters，未发表数据）。本研究聚焦于受威胁的西部亚种，该类群仅分布于澳大利亚远北部热带稀树草原中以水生露兜（*Pandanus aquaticus*）为优势种的河岸植被带。我们利用了一套时长超15年的高质量长期数据集，涵盖多个同龄群的寿命及完整生活史信息。该数据集使我们得以探究端粒长度、不同生命阶段的端粒缩短速率与个体寿命之间的关联。本研究采用被试内中心化分析方法（基于年龄差值与平均年龄），可同时检验寿命与端粒长度、端粒动态变化之间的相关性。