Data from: Trait compensation and sex-specific aging of performance in male and female professional basketball players

Phenotypic traits are often influenced by dynamic resource allocation trade-offs which, when occurring over the course of individual lifespans, may manifest as trait aging. Although aging is studied for a variety of traits that are closely tied to reproduction or reproductive effort, the aging of multiple traits related to fitness in other ways are less well understood. We took advantage of almost 30 years of data on human whole-organism performance in the National Basketball Association (U.S.A.) to examine trends of aging in performance traits associated with scoring. Given that patterns of aging differ between sexes in other animal species, we also analysed a smaller dataset on players in the Women's National Basketball Association to test for potential sex differences in the aging of comparable traits. We tested the hypothesis that age-related changes in a specific aspect of overall performance can be compensated for by elevated expression of another, related aspect. Our analyses suggest that the aging of performance traits used in basketball is generally characterised by senescence in males, whereas age-related changes in basketball performance are less evident in females. Our data also indicate a different rate of senescence of different performance traits associated with scoring over a male's lifetime.

表型性状（phenotypic traits）常受动态资源分配权衡（resource allocation trade-offs）的影响，若此类权衡发生于个体寿命周期内，则可表现为性状衰老。尽管学界已针对诸多与繁殖或繁殖投入紧密相关的性状的衰老展开了广泛研究，但其他以不同方式与适合度（fitness）相关的多性状的衰老机制仍未得到充分阐释。本研究借助美国职业篮球联赛（National Basketball Association, NBA）近30年的人类全机体运动表现（whole-organism performance）数据，探究与得分相关的运动表现性状的衰老趋势。鉴于其他动物物种中两性间的衰老模式存在显著差异，我们同时利用女子国家篮球协会（Women's National Basketball Association, WNBA）的小型数据集，检验同类性状的衰老是否存在潜在性别差异。我们提出如下假说：整体运动表现某一特定维度的年龄相关变化，可通过另一相关维度的表达增强得到补偿。分析结果显示，男性篮球运动员的运动表现性状衰老普遍以衰老（senescence）为特征，而女性篮球运动员的运动表现随年龄产生的变化则相对不显著；此外，数据表明男性职业生涯中，不同得分相关运动表现性状的衰老速率存在差异。