Links between parental life histories of wild salmon and the telomere lengths of their offspring

The importance of parental contributions to offspring development and subsequent performance is self-evident at a genomic level; however, parents can also affect offspring fitness by indirect genetic and environmental routes. The life history strategy that an individual adopts will be influenced by both genes and environment; and this may have important consequences for offspring. Recent research has linked telomere dynamics (i.e. telomere length and loss) in early life to future viability and longevity. Moreover, a number of studies have reported a heritable component to telomere length across a range of vertebrates, though the effects of other parental contribution pathways have been far less studied. By using wild Atlantic salmon with different parental life histories in an experimental split-brood IVF mating design and rearing the resulting families under standardised conditions, we show that there can be significant links between parental life history and offspring telomere length ...