Telomere length, individual quality and fitness in female European starlings ( <i>Sturnus vulgaris</i> ) during breeding
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Telomeres, short guanine-rich repeats that cap linear chromosomes, are involved in cell senescence and organismal ageing. Our present understanding of telomere function oscillates between a marker of individual quality, which should be positively correlated with reproduction, to a marker of costs of reproduction (e.g. due to DNA damage). To test these ‘quality’ and ‘cost’ hypotheses, we tested the output of very simple predictions in a free-living population of European starlings Sturnus vulgaris where reproductive success of adult females was followed over 2 breeding seasons (with 2 broods per breeding). If telomere length indicate individual quality, low quality females (LQ, no fledgling) should have lower telomere lengths than high quality females (which produced fledglings in 1 st and 2 nd broods). Additionally, physiological determinants of adult individual quality (established in a previous study) and provisioning rate should be positively associated with adult telomere lengths. Finally, telomere length should predict future reproductive success. Adult telomere length was lower in LQ females but only during the chick-rearing period. Females producing larger clutches at fledging in the 1 st brood of the 1 st year also had longer telomeres. Provisioning rate was positively related to telomere length, as were plasma markers of oxidative damage, non-esterified fatty acids and triglycerides. Despite these associations, we found weak support for telomeres as indicators of individual quality. Telomere length failed in predicting future reproduction success and there was a lack of consistency in within-individual telomere length over the breeding season. In starlings, we suggest that telomere length may indicate current breeding capacities and energy status of female adults, rather than future fecundity/survival.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".