Effects of developmental conditions on growth, stress, and telomeres in black-legged kittiwake chicks

Early-life conditions can drive ageing patterns and life history strategies throughout the lifespan. Certain social, genetic, and nutritional developmental conditions are more likely to produce high-quality offspring: those with good likelihood of recruitment and productivity. Here we call such conditions “favored states” and explore their relationship with physiological variables during development in a long-lived seabird, the black-legged kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla). Two favored states were experimentally generated by manipulation of food availability and brood size, while hatching order and sex were also explored as naturally generating favored states. Thus, the favored states we explored were high food availability, lower levels of sibling competition, hatching first, and male sex. We tested the effects of favored developmental conditions on growth, stress, telomere length (a molecular marker associated with lifespan), and nestling survival. Generation of favored states through man...生命早期环境条件可调控个体整个生命周期的衰老模式与生活史策略。特定的社会、遗传与营养发育条件更易培育出优质后代——这类后代具备更高的种群招募成功率与繁殖生产力。本研究将此类条件命名为‘偏好发育状态（favored states）’，并以长寿海鸟黑腿三趾鸥（Rissa tridactyla）为研究对象，探究其在发育阶段与生理变量间的关联。本研究通过调控食物可获得性与窝雏数，人工构建了两种偏好发育状态；同时将孵化顺序与性别作为自然产生偏好发育状态的因素进行探究。因此本研究涉及的偏好发育状态包括：高食物可获得性、较低的同胞竞争强度、率先孵化以及雄性性别。我们检测了偏好发育条件对幼鸟生长、应激水平、端粒长度（telomere length，一种与寿命相关的分子标志物）以及雏鸟存活率的影响。通过人为调控构建偏好发育状态的实验……