Young parents produce offspring with short telomeres: A study in a long-lived bird, the Black-browed Albatross (Thalassarche melanophrys)

In wild vertebrates, young parents are less likely to successfully rear offspring relative to older ones because of lower parental skills ('the constraint hypothesis'), lower parental investment ('the restraint hypothesis') or because of a progressive disappearance of lower-quality individuals at young ages ('the selection hypothesis'). Because it is practically difficult to follow an offspring during its entire life, most studies have only...