Maternal age has long been described to influence a broad range of offspring life-history traits, including longevity. However, relatively few studies have tested experimentally for the effects of paternal age and even fewer the potential interactive effects of father and mother age on offspring life-history traits from conception to death. To tackle these questions, I performed a factorial experimental design where I manipulated the age of both male and female field crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus) and subsequently assessed their effects over the offspring’s entire lifetime. I found that, despite coming from larger eggs, the embryos of old females grew up at a slower rate, took more time to develop, and showed lower hatching success than those of young females. Offspring postnatal viability was unaffected by female age but, at adulthood, the offspring of old females were bigger and lived shorter than those of young females. Male age effects were mostly present during offspring postnatal development as nymphs sired by old males having increased early mortality. Moreover, father age strongly influenced the development of offspring adult personality as revealed by the shyer personality of crickets sired by an old male. My results indicate that father and mother age at reproduction have different effects that affect offspring traits at different stages of their development. The results further suggest that father and mother age effects could be mediated by independent mechanisms and may separately influence the evolution of aging.

中文翻译：

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父母年龄对后代发育的异质影响

长期以来，人们一直认为产妇年龄会影响许多后代的生活史特征，包括寿命。然而，相对较少的研究对父本年龄的影响进行了实验性测试，甚至更少的父亲和母亲年龄对从受孕到死亡的后代生命历史特征的潜在互动影响。为了解决这些问题，我进行了析因实验设计，在其中我操纵了雄性和雌性field的年龄（G ryllus bimaculatus），并随后评估了它们对后代一生的影响。我发现，尽管雌雄的卵较大，但它们的生长速度却较慢，需要花费更多的时间才能发育，并且孵化成功率要低于雌雄。后代的出生后生存能力不受女性年龄的影响，但成年后，老年女性的后代比年轻女性大，寿命短。男性年龄影响主要表现在后代出生后，因为老年男性对若虫的si杀具有早期死亡率的增加。此外，父亲年龄极大地影响了后代成年人格的发展，这表现在一位老年男性的the性格特征上。我的结果表明，父亲和母亲在繁殖时的年龄具有不同的影响，这些影响会影响后代在不同发育阶段的性状。结果进一步表明，父亲和母亲的年龄影响可能是由独立的机制介导的，并且可能分别影响衰老的演变。