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Mothers of small-bodied children and fathers of vigorous sons live longer

Life-history traits (traits directly related to survival and reproduction) co-evolve and materialize through physiology and behavior. Accordingly, lifespan can be hypothesized as a potentially informative marker of life-history speed that subsumes the impact of diverse morphometric and behavioral tr...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Valge, Markus, Meitern, Richard, Hõrak, Peeter
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9905732/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36761140
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1057146
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author Valge, Markus
Meitern, Richard
Hõrak, Peeter
author_facet Valge, Markus
Meitern, Richard
Hõrak, Peeter
author_sort Valge, Markus
collection PubMed
description Life-history traits (traits directly related to survival and reproduction) co-evolve and materialize through physiology and behavior. Accordingly, lifespan can be hypothesized as a potentially informative marker of life-history speed that subsumes the impact of diverse morphometric and behavioral traits. We examined associations between parental longevity and various anthropometric traits in a sample of 4,000–11,000 Estonian children in the middle of the 20th century. The offspring phenotype was used as a proxy measure of parental genotype, so that covariation between offspring traits and parental longevity (defined as belonging to the 90th percentile of lifespan) could be used to characterize the aggregation between longevity and anthropometric traits. We predicted that larger linear dimensions of offspring associate with increased parental longevity and that testosterone-dependent traits associate with reduced paternal longevity. Twelve of 16 offspring traits were associated with mothers' longevity, while three traits (rate of sexual maturation of daughters and grip strength and lung capacity of sons) robustly predicted fathers' longevity. Contrary to predictions, mothers of children with small bodily dimensions lived longer, and paternal longevity was not linearly associated with their children's body size (or testosterone-related traits). Our study thus failed to find evidence that high somatic investment into brain and body growth clusters with a long lifespan across generations, and/or that such associations can be detected on the basis of inter-generational phenotypic correlations.
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spelling pubmed-99057322023-02-08 Mothers of small-bodied children and fathers of vigorous sons live longer Valge, Markus Meitern, Richard Hõrak, Peeter Front Public Health Public Health Life-history traits (traits directly related to survival and reproduction) co-evolve and materialize through physiology and behavior. Accordingly, lifespan can be hypothesized as a potentially informative marker of life-history speed that subsumes the impact of diverse morphometric and behavioral traits. We examined associations between parental longevity and various anthropometric traits in a sample of 4,000–11,000 Estonian children in the middle of the 20th century. The offspring phenotype was used as a proxy measure of parental genotype, so that covariation between offspring traits and parental longevity (defined as belonging to the 90th percentile of lifespan) could be used to characterize the aggregation between longevity and anthropometric traits. We predicted that larger linear dimensions of offspring associate with increased parental longevity and that testosterone-dependent traits associate with reduced paternal longevity. Twelve of 16 offspring traits were associated with mothers' longevity, while three traits (rate of sexual maturation of daughters and grip strength and lung capacity of sons) robustly predicted fathers' longevity. Contrary to predictions, mothers of children with small bodily dimensions lived longer, and paternal longevity was not linearly associated with their children's body size (or testosterone-related traits). Our study thus failed to find evidence that high somatic investment into brain and body growth clusters with a long lifespan across generations, and/or that such associations can be detected on the basis of inter-generational phenotypic correlations. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-01-25 /pmc/articles/PMC9905732/ /pubmed/36761140 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1057146 Text en Copyright © 2023 Valge, Meitern and Hõrak. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Public Health
Valge, Markus
Meitern, Richard
Hõrak, Peeter
Mothers of small-bodied children and fathers of vigorous sons live longer
title Mothers of small-bodied children and fathers of vigorous sons live longer
title_full Mothers of small-bodied children and fathers of vigorous sons live longer
title_fullStr Mothers of small-bodied children and fathers of vigorous sons live longer
title_full_unstemmed Mothers of small-bodied children and fathers of vigorous sons live longer
title_short Mothers of small-bodied children and fathers of vigorous sons live longer
title_sort mothers of small-bodied children and fathers of vigorous sons live longer
topic Public Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9905732/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36761140
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1057146
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