DOI: 10.5061/dryad.wdbrv1626
title: Data from: Pay up or die: Tradeoffs between costly telomere maintenance, somatic growth, and body condition in embryonic and adult sand lizards

description: Current knowledge about telomere biology relies to a very high degree on
 results from research on endotherms. This would not be problematic if
 organisms shared the same mechanisms regulating telomere length (TL) but
 this is not necessarily the case; e.g., most endotherms lack, or have very
 low levels, of telomerase (the main telomere repair enzyme) in adult
 somatic tissues, whereas they appear ubiquitous in ectotherms. To what
 extent this will bias our understanding of TL dynamics is largely unknown,
 since longitudinal studies of ectotherms in the wild have been exceedingly
 rare. Here, we analyze TL dynamics using qPCR-based analysis on a wild
 population of sand lizards (Lacerta agilis), with somatic telomerase,
 during a field and laboratory study over a decade. We show that
 slower-developing embryos hatch with longer TL, embryos from mothers
 surviving predator attacks more recently have shorter TL, and embryos that
 die in incubation have shorter TL than those that hatch out successfully.
 Hatchling TL predicts first year survival but has only a weak effect on TL
 in adults, which have longer and more variable TL than hatchlings. A
 contributing factor to this variation is that faster-growing adults have
 shorter TL. Adults with greater investments into TL maintenance show
 poorer body condition (residuals from a mass – snout-vent length
 regression) in both sexes, much in agreement with metabolic costs ideas
 underpinning TL dynamics. In conclusion, maternal stress in embryos, and
 nutritional budget constraints from rapid growth consistently throughout
 life, dampen telomere maintenance and elongation, a process that predicts
 a decline in mass scaled for size (body condition). Maintained telomere
 length above some critical threshold is under selection through its link
 to embryonic- and first year survival, in particular in young males.
  
description: # Data from: Pay up or die: Tradeoffs between costly telomere maintenance,
 somatic growth, and body condition in embryonic and adult sand lizards
 Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.wdbrv1626](10.5061/dryad.wdbrv1626) NOTE:
 Empty boxes in the available Excel sheets represent missing values for
 that specific trait and individual. In SAS, which has been used for the
 analyses, missing values are replaced by full stops (missing values should
 be replaced by program-specific identifiers, depending on which software
 you use). ## Description of the data and file structure Description of
 data files for MS ‘Pay up or die: tradeoffs between costly telomere
 maintenance, somatic growth and body condition in embryonic and adult sand
 lizards’ **File: EmbryonicGrowthData.xls** Variables: mom = maternal ID
 number bdate = birth date jsex = offspring sex ontsurv = ontogenetic
 survivorship (0=died, 1=survived to hatching) surv = first year
 survivorship (0=died, 1=survived) byear = year of birth fsvl = female body
 length in mm from snout to vent fcorreg = regenerated tail in mm in mother
 dad = paternal ID number incgrowth = embryonic growth rate measured as egg
 mass divided by the number of days in incubation tTSHatch = log
 transformed telomere length - reference gene length ratio at hatching  
 **File: AdultTeloAndConditionData.xls** Variables: adno = adult ID number
 sex = adult sex correg = regenerated tail in mm cond = nody condition
 measured as a residual from a mass-snout vent length regression
 DRegToMeanCorr = telomere change through life controlled for regression to
 the mean(‘D’) 
 
 **File: TeloDataZ.xls** Variables: adno = adult ID number sex = adult sex
 jDNAqual = juvenile dna quality measured as the A260/280 ratio myear =
 year of measurement aDNAqual = adult DNAquality measured as the A260/280
 ratio SVL = adult snout-vent length in mm tot = total length in mm mass =
 adult body mass in g, tTSHatch = log(Telomere length/Reference gene ratio
 at hatching), tTSAd = log(adult Telomere length/Reference gene ratio),
 tTSAge = log(Telomere length/Reference gene ratio at known age), fsvl =
 female snout-vent length in mm growthA = posthatching growth rate from
 hatching til adult recapture (mm), telchange = telomere change (positive
 or negative), telchangebin = the telchange variable recoded as 1 or 0 when
 required for modeling jcond = juvenile body condition measured as a
 residual from a mass-snout vent length regression, cond = adult body
 condition measured as a residual from a mass-snout vent length regression
 ## Code/software SAS Institute 9.4 ## Access information N/A