Aubrey Sirman

Loyola University Chicago | LUC · Arrupe College

Developing organisms often plastically modify growth in response to environmental circumstances, which may be adaptive but is expected to entail long-term costs. However, the mechanisms that mediate these growth adjustments and any associated costs are less well understood. In vertebrates, one mechanism that may be important in this context is the...

Telomeres, protective caps at the end of chromosomes, are often positively related to lifespan and are thought to be an important mechanism of organismal aging. To better understand the casual relationships between telomere length and longevity, it is essential to be able to experimentally manipulate telomere dynamics (length and loss rate). Previo...

Parental stress often has long-term consequences for offspring. However, the mechanisms underlying these effects and how they are shaped by conditions offspring subsequently experience are poorly understood. Telomeres, which often shorten in response to stress and predict longevity, may contribute to, and/or reflect these cross-generational effects...

In vertebrates, exposure to diverse stressors during early life activates a stress response that can initiate compensatory mechanisms or promote cellular damage with long-term fitness consequences. A growing number of studies associate exposure to stressors during early life with increased damage to telomeres (i.e., promoting the shortening of thes...

Reproductive investment often comes at a cost to longevity, but the mechanisms that underlie these long‐term effects are not well understood. In male vertebrates, elevated testosterone has been shown to increase reproductive success, but simultaneously decrease survival. One factor that may contribute to or serve as a biomarker of these long‐term e...

Effects of stress on body size and Telomere dynamics in House Sparrows (Passer domestics)

Reproduction is thought to come at a cost to longevity. Based on the assumption that increased energy expenditure during reproduction is associated with increased free-radical production by mitochondria, oxidative damage has been suggested to drive this trade-off. We examined the impact of reproduction on liver mitochondrial function by utilizing p...

Table S1. All potential transcription factor binding sites (matrix similarity >72%) on the putative Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) ERα promoter region according to MatInspector (Genomatix; Cartharius et al. 2005).

There is mounting evidence that, across taxa, females breeding in competitive environments tend to allocate more testosterone to their offspring prenatally and these offspring typically have more aggressive and faster-growing phenotypes. To date, no study has determined the mechanisms mediating this maternal effect's influence on offspring phenotyp...