life-history traits

Redox-regulation and life-history trade-offs: scavenging mitochondrial ROS improves growth in a wild bird

Enlace mardeaves ESPECIES,Larus michahellis,PUBLICACIÓN CIENTÍFICA,REPOSITORIO ,,,
Velando, A., Noguera, J.C., da Silva, A. e Kim, S.Y., 2019. Redox-regulation and life-history trade-offs: scavenging mitochondrial ROS improves growth in a wild bird. Scientific reports, 9(1), p.2203.
It has been proposed that animals usually restrain their growth because fast growth leads to an increased production of mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (mtROS), which can damage mitochondrial DNA and promote mitochondrial dysfunction. Here, we explicitly test whether this occurs in a wild bird by supplementing chicks with a mitochondria-targeted ROS scavenger, mitoubiquinone (mitoQ), and examining growth rates and mtDNA damage. In the yellow-legged gull Larus michahellis, mitoQ supplementation increased the early growth rate of chicks but did not reduce mtDNA damage. The level of mtDNA damage was negatively correlated with chick mass, but this relationship was not affected by the mitoQ treatment. We also found that chick growth was positively correlated with both mtDNA copy number and the mitochondrial enzymatic activity of citrate synthase, suggesting a link between mitochondrial content and growth. Additionally, we found that mitoQ supplementation increased mitochondrial content (in males), altered the relationship between mtDNA copy number and damage, and downregulated some transcriptional pathways related to cell rejuvenation, suggesting that scavenging mtROS during development enhanced growth rates but at the expense of cellular turnover. Our study confirms the central role of mitochondria modulating life-history trade-offs during development by other mechanisms than mtROS-inflicted damage.

 

Complex demographic heterogeneity from anthropogenic impacts in a coastal marine predator

Enlace mardeaves Phalacrocorax aristotelis,PUBLICACIÓN CIENTÍFICA,REPOSITORIO ,,,,,,,,

Oro, D., Álvarez, D. e Velando, A., 2018. Complex demographic heterogeneity from anthropogenic impacts in a coastal marine predator. Ecological Applications.

Environmental drivers, including anthropogenic impacts, affect vital rates of organisms. Nevertheless, the influence of these drivers may depend on the physical features of the habitat and how they affect life history strategies depending on individual covariates such as age and sex. Here, the long‐term monitoring (1994–2014) of marked European Shags (Phalacrocorax aristotelis) in eight colonies in two regions with different ecological features, such as foraging habitat, allowed us to test several biological hypotheses about how survival changes by age and sex in each region by means of multi‐event capture–recapture modeling. Impacts included fishing practices and bycatch, invasive introduced carnivores and the severe Prestige oil spill. Adult survival was constant but, unexpectedly, it was different between sexes. This difference was opposite in each region. The impact of the oil spill on survival was important only for adults (especially for females) in one region and lasted a single year. Juvenile survival was time dependent but this variability was not synchronized between regions, suggesting a strong signal of regional environmental variability. Mortality due to bycatch was also different between sex, age and region. Interestingly the results showed that the size of the fishing fleet is not necessarily a good proxy for assessing the impact of bycatch mortality, which may be more dependent on the fishing grounds and the fishing gears employed in each season of the year. Anthropogenic impacts affected survival differently by age and sex, which was expected for a long‐lived organism with sexual size dimorphism. Strikingly, these differences varied depending on the region, indicating that habitat heterogeneity is demographically important to how environmental variability (including anthropogenic impacts) and resilience influence population dynamics.

Pre-fledgling oxidative damage predicts recruitment in a long-lived bird

Enlace mardeaves Phalacrocorax aristotelis,PUBLICACIÓN CIENTÍFICA,REPOSITORIO ,,

Noguera, J. C., Kim, S.-Y. & Velando, A. Pre-fledgling oxidative damage predicts recruitment in a long-lived bird. Biology letters rsbl20110756 (2011).

Empirical evidence has shown that stressful conditions experienced during development may exert long-term negative effects on life-history traits. Although it has been suggested that oxidative stress has long-term effects, little is known about delayed consequences of oxidative stress experienced early in life in fitness-related traits. Here, we tested whether oxidative stress during development has long-term effects on a life-history trait directly related to fitness in three colonies of European shags Phalacrocorax aristotelis. Our results revealed that recruitment probability decreased with oxidative damage during the nestling period; oxidative damage, in turn, was related to the level of antioxidant capacity. Our results suggest a link between oxidative stress during development and survival to adulthood, a key element of population dynamics.