The relationship of telomere shortening and cellular ageing in cultured cells such as fibroblasts is straightforward: telomeres shorten with an increasing number of cell divisions until they trigger replicative senescence which prevents further mitotic cycles. But studies investigating the relationship between telomere shortening and ageing in whole organisms show contrasting results: while there is a clear decline in telomere length (TL) with chronological age in some species such as humans, no such decline is observed in others. In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Foley et al. (2020) show that experiencing harsh weather conditions correlates with longitudinal telomere shortening in the bat species Myotis myotis, whereas chronological age does not (Foley et al., 2020). Further, the authors investigated whether genetics influence TL and find a low heritability (h² = 0.01–0.06) again suggesting that environmental effects are the dominant drivers of variation in TL in this species. These are important findings as there is disagreement in the literature about the relative magnitude of genetic and environmental effects contributing to TL variation in different species. This paper investigating the impact of environmental effects makes a novel and important contribution to the literature on TL in free‐living mammals.

中文翻译：

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蝙蝠物种Myotis myotis的端粒缩短与恶劣的天气条件有关。

端粒缩短与培养细胞（如成纤维细胞）中细胞衰老的关系很简单：端粒随着细胞分裂数量的增加而缩短，直到它们触发复制性衰老，阻止了进一步的有丝分裂周期。但是，研究整个生物中端粒缩短与衰老之间关系的研究显示出相反的结果：虽然某些物种（例如人类）的端粒长度（TL）随着时间的推移而明显下降，但在其他物种中却没有观察到这种下降。在本期《分子生态学》中，Foley等人。（2020）表明蝙蝠物种Myotis myotis经历恶劣的天气条件与纵向端粒缩短相关，而按年代划分的年龄则没有（Foley等，2020）。此外，作者调查了遗传因素是否影响TL并发现遗传力较低（h ²  = 0.01–0.06），再次表明环境影响是该物种TL变异的主要驱动因素。这些发现是重要的发现，因为在文献中就遗传和环境影响的相对大小造成不同物种的TL变异存在分歧。本文研究了环境影响的影响，为自由生存哺乳动物的TL文献提供了新颖而重要的贡献。