(Press-News.org) A new study published in Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology reveals a surprising link between cellular aging markers and survival in black-legged kittiwakes (members of the gull family).
In “Who’s coming home? Shorter early-life telomeres predict return to the natal colony in an Arctic seabird” authors Jingqi Corey Liu, Olivier Chastel, Christophe Barbraud, Claus Bech, Pierre Blévin, Paco Bustamante, Børge Moe, Elin Noreen, and Frédéric Angelier found that kittiwake chicks with shorter telomeres were more likely to return to their birthplace as adults, contradicting predictions that longer telomeres would indicate better survival prospects.
Telomeres are protective DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes that typically shorten with age and cellular stress. Scientists have long viewed longer telomeres as a sign of good health and higher fitness. However, this international study of 46 chicks monitored over six years in Svalbard, Norway, suggests the relationship is more nuanced than previously thought.
“Such complex results may be due to the resource allocation trade-off between growth and telomere maintenance,” the authors write, after discovering that in broods of two chicks—where sibling competition is more intense—larger individuals tended to have both higher-trophic-level diets (indicated by nitrogen stable isotopic values) and shorter telomeres.
“This suggests that sibling competition might have imposed stronger resource constraints on the chicks, making them prioritize the limited resources towards growth at the expense of telomere length,” they write.
The authors used Southern blot analysis to measure telomere length in red blood cells from 30-day-old chicks. Nitrogen stable isotope analysis (δ15N) revealed what trophic level of prey each chick was receiving, with higher values indicating more fish, which are of higher trophic levels and possibly more nutritious, rather than marine invertebrates. The team scanned the colony every breeding season from 2011 to 2016 to track which individuals returned to their birthplace.
The researchers propose that in challenging conditions, chicks may strategically invest in immediate survival advantages like body size rather than maintaining long telomeres, whose costs “might be paid only later in life.” Given that body size is crucial for young seabirds' survival and is locked in during development, prioritizing growth over telomere maintenance may ultimately improve long-term survival chances.
The findings highlight a caveat for using telomere length as an indicator of Darwinian fitness in the wild. “Our study supports that early-life telomere length can be a predictor of later-life performance, but it should be used with caution when considering the effect of the resource-allocation trade-off with growth, which can influence the direction of prediction,” the authors conclude.
Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology primarily publishes original research examining fundamental questions about how the ecological environment and/or evolutionary history interact with physiological function, as well as the ways physiology may constrain behavior. For EEP, physiology denotes the study of function in the broadest sense, across levels of organization from molecules to morphology to organismal performance and on behavior and life history traits.
Contact: Mallory Gevaert / mgevaert@uchicago.edu
END
Shorter early-life telomere length as a predictor of survival
2026-02-24
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Why do female caribou have antlers?
2026-02-24
Biologists have long wondered why caribou are the only deer in the world in which females, like males, have antlers.
A study of shed antlers collected from calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge provides a new answer.
Calving grounds are areas where migratory females give birth every year and also where they shed their antlers. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati found evidence that caribou, particularly moms with newborns, gnaw on antlers that were shed years earlier to supplement their diets with crucial minerals.
The study ...
How studying yeast in the gut could lead to new, better drugs
2026-02-24
A new study sheds light on the behavior of yeast cells in the gut, paving the way for new lines of yeast that more efficiently produce therapeutic drugs tailored to address specific diseases.
“Yeast is promising as a drug-delivery platform,” says Nathan Crook, corresponding author of the study and an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University. “Previous work has shown that yeast cells can be modified to produce specific molecules in the gut, such as therapeutics that ...
Chemists thought phosphorus had shown all its cards. It surprised them with a new move
2026-02-24
Key takeaways
Precious transition metals like platinum and palladium are used as catalysts to speed up chemical reactions that produce carbon-nitrogen bonds.
UCLA organic chemists have figured out how to make inexpensive phosphine act like a transition-metal catalyst by using a light-reactive molecule to activate it.
The achievement could be useful in the pharmaceutical industry and help bring down the price of some drugs.
A discovery by UCLA organic chemists may one day put catalytic converter thieves out of business. In new research, they’ve used ...
A feedback loop of rising submissions and overburdened peer reviewers threatens the peer review system of the scientific literature
2026-02-24
The process of peer review is vital to contemporary science, but is also under enormous strain. This study uses mathematical models to dissect the threats to the long-term viability of peer review, suggesting paths forward to place peer review on more stable footing.
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: https://plos.io/3NUgj2X
Article title: Screening, sorting, and the feedback cycles that imperil peer review
Author countries: United States of America
Funding: This work was partially supported by NSF (www.nsf.gov) awards SES-2346645 ...
Rediscovered music may never sound the same twice, according to new Surrey study
2026-02-24
Rediscovering long forgotten music does not mean recovering how it was meant to be performed, and that is a major challenge for the arts, finds a new study from the University of Surrey. An expert found that rediscovered music comes with no shared understanding for how it should sound, leaving performers to make radically different interpretive choices that reshape the work itself.
In an article published in Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, a researcher focused on a little-known piano miniature by Surrey-based British composer ...
Ochsner Baton Rouge expands specialty physicians and providers at area clinics and O’Neal hospital
2026-02-24
BATON ROUGE, La. – As part of its continued investment in specialty care access for the Baton Rouge community, Ochsner Baton Rouge welcomes several new physicians and advanced practice providers who are now accepting new patients.
Alexis Ambeau, PhD, practices neuropsychology at Ochsner Health Center – O'Neal, specializing in assessing adults with a range of conditions, including neurodegenerative disorders and other dementias, movement disorders, multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune disorders, traumatic brain injury, stroke, central nervous ...
New strategies aim at HIV’s last strongholds
2026-02-24
A new study has overcome a long-standing challenge—how to isolate and study elusive HIV-infected cells called authentic reservoir clones (ARCs) that evade the immune system, making the disease difficult to cure. Researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine, Rockefeller University, and collaborating institutions offer a detailed look into these hidden HIV‑harboring cells and show that some may be more vulnerable to immune destruction than previously believed.
The findings, published Feb. 24 in Nature, detail how the researchers ...
Ambitious climate policy ensures reduction of CO2 emissions
2026-02-24
Global efforts to combat climate change in the last two decades have contributed to considerably cutting carbon emissions, according to a new study conducted primarily by scientists from Germany and the United Kingdom. The participating researchers investigated which climate policies were particularly effective. Reduced emissions have generally been the result of ambitious, i.e., larger and stricter climate policy portfolios. In addition, countries targeting the largest sources of emissions were particularly successful, according to the experts from Heidelberg University, who played a major role in the study.
The research findings are based on a statistical analysis ...
Frontiers in Science Deep Dive webinar series: How bacteria can reclaim lost energy, nutrients, and clean water from wastewater
2026-02-24
Wastewater contains untapped resources that, if reclaimed, could power agriculture, global sanitation, and its own treatment to help us meet UN SDG goals.
This is according to a new Frontiers in Science lead article in which researchers Prof Uwe Schröder, Prof Falk Harnisch, Dr Elizabeth Heidrich, and Dr Deepak Pant examine how microbial electrochemical technologies (METs) can convert organic waste streams into electricity, fuels, fertilizers, and usable water more efficiently. Pilot deployments—from the UK’s Glastonbury Festival to field trials in Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa—are demonstrating its ...
UMaine researcher develops model to protect freshwater fish worldwide from extinction
2026-02-24
Whether it’s redfin pickerel in the Kennebec River or sturgeon in the Great Lakes, nearly one-third of freshwater fish species are facing possible extinction, threatening food supplies, ecosystems and outdoor recreation.
As conservationists work to preserve these species, the University of Maine assistant professor Christina Murphy asked herself if there was an easier way to identify threats to fish before they become endangered.
After five years of data collection, programming and testing, Murphy and her colleagues developed a computer model that identifies potential threats to more than 10,000 freshwater species worldwide. Encouragingly, the majority of species accounted for ...