Data from: Aging parasites produce offspring with poor fitness prospects

Senescing individuals have poor survival prospects and low fecundity. They can also produce offspring with reduced survival and reproductive success. We tested the effect of parental age on the performance of descendants in the nematode Heligmosomoides polygyrus, an intestinal parasite of rodents. We found that offspring of senescing worms had reduced within-host survival and reduced egg shedding over the first month post-infection compared with offspring produced by young parents. These results suggest that declining offspring quality is a component of senescence in parasitic nematodes and might have evolutionary consequences for the optimal schedule of age-dependent investment into reproductive effort.

衰老个体的生存前景欠佳，繁殖力低下，且其所产生的后代生存能力与繁殖成功率均会下降。本研究以啮齿动物肠道寄生虫——多形螺旋线虫（Heligmosomoides polygyrus）为实验对象，探究亲本年龄对子代生存表现的影响。研究结果显示，与年轻亲本所产子代相比，衰老亲本产生的子代在感染后首个月内的宿主体内存活率更低，且虫卵排出量更少。上述结果表明，子代质量下降是寄生线虫衰老过程的一个组成部分，这或许会对依赖于年龄的繁殖投入最优时序产生进化层面的影响。