Reproductive senescence is the decrease of reproductive performance with increasing age and can potentially include trans‐generational effects as the offspring produced by old parents might have a lower fitness than those produced by young parents. This negative effect may be caused either by the age of the father, mother or the interaction between the ages of both parents. Using the common woodlouse Armadillidium vulgare, an indeterminate grower, as a biological model, we tested for the existence of a deleterious effect of parental age on fitness components. Contrary to previous findings reported from vertebrate studies, old parents produced both a higher number and larger offspring than young parents. However, their offspring had lower fitness components (by surviving less, producing a smaller number of clutches or not reproducing at all) than offspring born to young parents. Our findings strongly support the existence of trans‐generational senescence in woodlice and contradict the belief that old individuals in indeterminate growers contribute the most to recruitment and correspond thereby to the key life stage for population dynamics. Our work also provides rare evidence that the trans‐generational effect of senescence can be stronger than direct reproductive senescence in indeterminate growers.

中文翻译：

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不确定种植者的生殖衰老和亲代效应

生殖衰老是生殖能力随着年龄的增长而下降，并且可能包括跨代效应，因为年老父母产生的后代可能比年轻父母产生的后代健康度低。这种负面影响可能是由父亲、母亲的年龄或父母双方年龄之间的相互作用造成的。我们使用常见的木虱 Armadillidium v​​ulgare（一种不确定的种植者）作为生物模型，测试了父母年龄对健康成分的有害影响的存在。与之前脊椎动物研究报告的结果相反，年长的父母比年轻的父母生育的后代数量更多，数量也更大。然而，他们的后代具有较低的健康成分（通过更少的存活，与年轻父母所生的后代相比，产生较少数量的离合器或根本不繁殖）。我们的研究结果强烈支持木虱跨代衰老的存在，并与不确定种植者中的老年个体对补充贡献最大的信念相矛盾，从而与种群动态的关键生命阶段相对应。我们的工作还提供了罕见的证据，表明在不确定的种植者中，衰老的跨代效应可能比直接生殖衰老更强。