RT Journal Article
T1 Urban blackbirds have shorter telomeres
A1 Ibáñez-Álamo, Juan Diego
A1 Pineda Pampliega, Javier
A1 Thomson, Robert L.
A1 Aguirre De Miguel, José Ignacio
A1 Díez Fernández, Alazne
A1 Faivre, Bruno
A1 Figuerola, Jordi
A1 Verhulst, Simon
AB Urbanization, one of the most extreme human-induced environmental changes, represents a major challenge for many organisms. Anthropogenic habitats can have opposing effects on different fitness components, for example, by decreasing starvation risk but also health status. Assessment of the net fitness effect of anthropogenic habitats is therefore difficult. Telomere length is associated with phenotypic quality and mortality rate in many species, and the rate of telomere shortening is considered an integrative measure of the ‘life stress’ experienced by an individual. This makes telomere length a promising candidate for examining the effects of urbanization on the health status of individuals. We investigated whether telomere length differed between urban and forest-dwelling common blackbirds (Turdus merula). Using the terminal restriction fragment assay, we analysed telomere length in yearlings and older adults from five population dyads (urban versus forest) across Europe. In both age classes, urban blackbirds had significantly shorter telomeres (547 bp) than blackbirds in natural habitats, indicating lower health status in urban blackbirds. We propose several potential hypotheses to explain our results. Our findings show that even successful city dwellers such as blackbirds pay a price for living in these anthropogenic habitats.
PB The Royal Society
SN 1744-9561
YR 2018
FD 2018
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/115526
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/115526
LA eng
NO Ibáñez-Álamo, J. D., Pineda-Pampliega, J., Thomson, R. L., Aguirre, J. I., Díez-Fernández, A., Faivre, B., Figuerola, J., & Verhulst, S. (2018). Urban blackbirds have shorter telomeres. Biology Letters, 14(3). https://doi.org/10.1098/RSBL.2018.0083
NO J.D.I. was funded by a postdoctoral contract (TAHUB-104) from the program ‘Andalucía Talent Hub’ (Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions—COFUND). A.D. was funded by the ‘Severo Ochoa’ program from MICINN (Spain). J.P. was funded by a grant from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (CT45/15-CT46/15).
NO European Commission
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España)
NO Universidad Complutense de Madrid
DS Docta Complutense
RD 22 mar 2026