Dryad
Published January 27, 2017 | Version v1
Dataset Open

Data from: Sex differences in leucocyte telomere length in a free-living mammal

Authors/Creators

  • 1. University of Edinburgh
  • 2. Moredun Foundation

Description

Mounting evidence suggests that average telomere length reflects previous stress and predicts subsequent survival across vertebrate species. In humans, leucocyte telomere length (LTL) is consistently shorter during adulthood in males than in females, although the causes of this sex difference and its generality to other mammals remain unknown. Here, we measured LTL in a cross-sectional sample of free-living Soay sheep and found shorter telomeres in males than in females in later adulthood (>3 years of age), but not in early life. This observation was not related to sex differences in growth or parasite burden, but we did find evidence for reduced LTL associated with increased horn growth in early life in males. Variation in LTL was independent of variation in the proportions of different leucocyte cell types, which are known to differ in telomere length. Our results provide the first evidence of sex differences in LTL from a wild mammal, but longitudinal studies are now required to determine whether telomere attrition rates or selective disappearance are responsible for these observed differences.

Notes

Watson et al - Data
Data used in analyses presented in this paper. Please contact the corresponding author if you wish to use this data for anything other than exact replication of our our analyses. Note that individual sheep IDs have been scrambled and will not correspond to IDs in data associated with other publications using the same study system.
Watson MEC-16-0976 Dryad.csv

Files

Watson MEC-16-0976 Dryad.csv

Files (39.4 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:198c087d164cdb1cc8c316967fd137ad
39.4 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Related works

Is cited by
10.1111/mec.13992 (DOI)