Supplementary material from "Older fathers' children have lower evolutionary fitness across four centuries and in four populations"
Posted on 2017-08-15 - 14:54
Higher paternal age at offspring conception increases de novo genetic mutations. Based on evolutionary genetic theory we predicted older fathers' children, all else equal, would be less likely to survive and reproduce, i.e. have lower fitness. In sibling control studies, we find support for negative paternal age effects on offspring survival and reproductive success across four large populations with an aggregate N > 1.4 million. Three populations were pre-industrial (1670–1850) Western populations and showed negative paternal age effects on infant survival and offspring reproductive success. In twentieth-century Sweden, we found minuscule paternal age effects on survival, but found negative effects on reproductive success. Effects survived tests for key competing explanations, including maternal age and parental loss, but effects varied widely over different plausible model specifications and some competing explanations such as diminishing paternal investment and epigenetic mutations could not be tested. We can use our findings to aid in predicting the effect increasingly older parents in today's society will have on their children's survival and reproductive success. To the extent that we succeeded in isolating a mutation-driven effect of paternal age, our results can be understood to show that de novo mutations reduce offspring fitness across populations and time periods.
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C. Arslan, Ruben; Willführ, Kai P.; Frans, Emma M.; J. H. Verweij, Karin; Bürkner, Paul-Christian; Myrskylä, Mikko; et al. (2017). Supplementary material from "Older fathers' children have lower evolutionary fitness across four centuries and in four populations". The Royal Society. Collection. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3853510.v1
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AUTHORS (10)
RC
Ruben C. Arslan
KW
Kai P. Willführ
EF
Emma M. Frans
KJ
Karin J. H. Verweij
PB
Paul-Christian Bürkner
MM
Mikko Myrskylä
EV
Eckart Voland
CA
Catarina Almqvist
BP
Brendan P. Zietsch
LP
Lars Penke