A Workshop in Ecology and Behaviour seminar hosted by the School of Biological Sciences
Why age? This age-old question is fascinating and has received a lot of attention recently – in particular with respect to trans-generational effects, where non-genetic information gets passed onto future generations. For instance, in wild house sparrows, genetic, not foster, offspring from older parents have lower life-time fitness than their siblings that were born when the parents were younger. Here I present a round-up of results in wild and captive house sparrows (and some chicken!), that may help us better understand this strange phenomenon.