Data from: Evolution of differential maternal age effects on male and female offspring development and longevity

1. Maternal age effects on life-history traits, including longevity, are widespread and can be seen as a manifestation of ageing. However, little is known about how maternal lifespan may influence the maternal age effect. At a given chronological age, a long-lived parent may be at a younger biological age than a short-lived parent, and thus have a less severe parental age effect. However, earlier work using experimentally evolved short- and long-lived lines did not support this hypothesis. 2. We scored developmental time and longevity of 14995 individual seed beetles, Callosobruchus maculatus derived from replicate short-lived and long-lived lines created via artificial selection on male lifespan. 3. Offspring from older mothers had shorter lifespan, which is consistent with most of the literature. 4. We found support for the hypothesis that detrimental maternal age effects evolve to be weaker under selection for long lifespan. However, this finding was only apparent in males, suggesting that maternal age affects male and female offspring differently. 5. These results suggest that sex-dependent parental age effects should be incorporated in the studies of longevity and ageing evolution and that selection on one sex can cause evolution of parental age effects in the other sex.

1. 母体年龄对包括寿命在内的生命史特征（life-history traits）的影响普遍存在，可视为衰老的典型表现形式。然而，目前学界对于母体自身寿命如何影响母体年龄效应（maternal age effect）的认知仍较为有限。在相同实足年龄（chronological age）下，长寿命亲本的生理年龄（biological age）可能低于短寿命亲本，因此其亲本年龄效应（parental age effect）的强度也更弱。不过，此前利用实验演化获得的短寿命与长寿命品系开展的相关研究并未支持这一假说。
2. 我们对14995头绿豆象（Callosobruchus maculatus）的发育时长与寿命进行了统计记录，这些个体源自通过针对雄性寿命的人工选择所构建的重复短寿命与长寿命品系。
3. 高龄母体所产后代的寿命更短，这一结果与绝大多数已有研究的结论相符。
4. 我们的研究结果支持下述假说：在以延长寿命为目标的选择压力下，有害的母体年龄效应会演化得更弱。不过该结论仅在雄性后代中显著，表明母体年龄对雄性与雌性后代的影响存在性别差异。
5. 上述结果提示，在寿命与衰老演化的相关研究中，应纳入性别依赖的亲本年龄效应（sex-dependent parental age effects）相关内容；同时，针对某一性别的选择，可引发另一性别亲本年龄效应的演化。