Senescence in the wild: Insights from a long-term study on Seychelles warblers.

We describe how key cellular and physiological processes (oxidative stress and telomere shortening) underpinning senescence are affected by individual and environmental characteristics in the Seychelles warbler (e.g. food availability, reproductive investment, disease) and we discuss how such physiological variation may mediate the relationship between environmental characteristics and senescence. Based on our work using Seychelles warblers as a model system, we show how insights from long-term studies of wild animals may help unravel the causes of the remarkable variation in senescence observed in natural systems, and highlight areas for promising future research.
PMID: 26344178 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Experimental Gerontology - September 4, 2015 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Hammers M, Kingma SA, Bebbington K, van de Crommenacker J, Spurgin LG, Richardson DS, Burke T, Dugdale HL, Komdeur J Tags: Exp Gerontol Source Type: research