Data from: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Effects of paternal age at conception on fathers and sons
Data files
Jun 24, 2024 version files 2.30 MB
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analysis.Rmd
25.85 KB
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F1_LS.csv
11.53 KB
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F1counts_and_mortality.csv
15.78 KB
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HTML_code.html
2.24 MB
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README.md
2.06 KB
Abstract
Advancing male age is often hypothesised to reduce both, male fertility and offspring quality due to reproductive senescence. However, the effects of advancing male age on reproductive output and offspring quality are not always deleterious. For example, older fathers might buffer effects of reproductive senescence by terminally investing in reproduction. Similarly, males that survive to reproduce at an old age, might carry alleles that confer high viability (viability selection) which are then inherited by offspring, or might have high reproductive potential (selective disappearance). Differentiating these mechanisms requires an integrated experimental study of paternal survival and reproductive performance, as well as offspring quality, which is currently lacking. Using a cross-sectional study in Drosophila melanogaster, we test the effects of paternal age at conception (PAC) on paternal survival and reproductive success, and on the lifespans of sons. We discover that mating at an old age is linked with decreased future male survival, suggesting that mating-induced mortality is possibly due to old fathers being frail. We find no evidence for terminal investment, and show that reproductive senescence in fathers does not onset until their late-adult life. Additionally, we find that as a father’s lifespan increases, his probability of siring offspring increases, for older PAC treatments only. Lastly, we show that sons born to older fathers live longer than those born to younger fathers, due to viability selection. Collectively, our results suggest that advancing paternal age is not necessarily associated with deleterious effects for offspring, and may even lead to older fathers producing longer-lived offspring.
README: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Effects of paternal age at conception on fathers and sons
1. Analysis: R code used for analysing data.
2. HTML_code: HTML document for analysis file with all model outputs, after all analysis have been run.
3. F1_LS: file with data for offspring survival.
a. Row: Row number
b. Paternal_ID: ID of fathers
c. Offspring_ID: ID of sons, which includes the ID of the father followed by the within-father ID of the son
d. Latency: Mating latency of father
e. Duration: Mating duration of father
f. Mating_age: age at which the father mated to conceive the sons
g. Paternal_LS: lifespan of the father
h. F1_count: number of offspring produced by the father at the age the son was conceived
i. F1_LS: lifespan of the son
4. F1counts and mortality: data for paternal survival and reproduction
a. Row: Row number
b. ID: paternal ID
c. Latency: Mating latency of father
d. Duration: Mating duration of father
e. Mating_age: age at which the father mated to conceive the sons, as an ordinal variable
f. Mating_treatment: same as mating age, but as a categorical, nominal variable
g. Paternal_LS: lifespan of the father
h. Censor: “1” if paternal lifespan was measured. “0” if it was censored.
i. F1_count: number of offspring produced by the father at the “mating age”
j. Fertile: “1” if father produced an offspring, “0” if father did not produce any offspring
k. Terminal_lag_days: days elapsed between mating and death
l. Rep_analysis: whether or not to include in analysis of reproductive output. “0” given for unmated males.
m. Alive_3_days: probability of father surviving 3 days after mating where “1” is if father survived, “0” is if father died.