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活史性状（life-history traits）的影响普遍存在，可视为衰老（ageing）的一种表现形式。然而，目前关于母体寿命如何影响母体年龄效应（maternal age effect）的研究仍较为匮乏。在时序年龄（chronological age）相同的情况下，长寿亲本的生物学年龄（biological age）可能短于短命亲本，因此其亲本年龄效应的严重程度更低。但此前通过对雄性寿命进行人工选择（artificial selection）构建的长短寿命品系开展的实验研究，并未支持这一假说。
2. 我们对14995头四纹豆象（Callosobruchus maculatus）的发育时长与寿命进行了统计，该实验材料源自通过人工选择雄性寿命构建的多个重复长短寿命品系。
3. 老龄母体所产后代的寿命更短，这与绝大多数已有研究的结果相符。
4. 我们的研究结果支持以下假说：在以长寿为目标的选择压力下，有害的母体年龄效应会演化得更弱。但这一效应仅在雄性后代中显著，表明母体年龄对雌雄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研究中，应纳入性别依赖的亲本年龄效应（sex-dependent parental age effects）；同时，对某一性别的选择可引发另一性别的亲本年龄效应发生演化。