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Older fathers’ children have lower evolutionary fitness across four centuries and in four populations

View ORCID ProfileRuben C. Arslan, Kai P. Willführ, Emma Frans, Karin J. H. Verweij, Mikko Myrskylä, Eckart Voland, Catarina Almqvist, Brendan P. Zietsch, Lars Penke
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/042788
Ruben C. Arslan
1Biological Personality Psychology, Georg Elias Müller Institute of Psychology, Georg August University Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
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  • ORCID record for Ruben C. Arslan
Kai P. Willführ
2Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, 18057 Rostock, Germany
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Emma Frans
3Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Oxford, OX3 7JX, United Kingdom
4Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics,Karolinska Institutet, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden
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Karin J. H. Verweij
5Department of Biological Psychology,VU University, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
6School of Psychology,University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
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Mikko Myrskylä
2Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, 18057 Rostock, Germany
7Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom
8Population Research Unit, University of Helsinki, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
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Eckart Voland
9Department of Biophilosophy, Justus Liebig University Gießen, 35390 Gießen, Germany
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Catarina Almqvist
4Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics,Karolinska Institutet, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden
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Brendan P. Zietsch
6School of Psychology,University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
10Genetic Epidemiology, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, QLD 4006, Australia
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Lars Penke
1Biological Personality Psychology, Georg Elias Müller Institute of Psychology, Georg August University Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
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Abstract

Higher paternal age at offspring conception increases de novo genetic mutations (Kong et al., 2012). Based on evolutionary genetic theory we predicted that the offspring of older fathers would be less likely to survive and reproduce, i.e. have lower fitness. In a sibling control study, we find clear support for negative paternal age effects on offspring survival, mating and reproductive success across four large populations with an aggregate N > 1.3 million in main analyses. Compared to a sibling born when the father was 10 years younger, individuals had 4-13% fewer surviving children in the four populations. Three populations were pre-industrial (1670-1850) Western populations and showed a pattern of paternal age effects across the offspring’s lifespan. In 20th-century Sweden, we found no negative paternal age effects on child survival or marriage odds. Effects survived tests for competing explanations, including maternal age and parental loss. To the extent that we succeeded in isolating a mutation-driven effect of paternal age, our results can be understood to show that de novo mutations reduce offspring fitness across populations and time. We can use this understanding to predict the effect of increasingly delayed reproduction on offspring genetic load, mortality and fertility.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted March 08, 2016.
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Older fathers’ children have lower evolutionary fitness across four centuries and in four populations
Ruben C. Arslan, Kai P. Willführ, Emma Frans, Karin J. H. Verweij, Mikko Myrskylä, Eckart Voland, Catarina Almqvist, Brendan P. Zietsch, Lars Penke
bioRxiv 042788; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/042788
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Older fathers’ children have lower evolutionary fitness across four centuries and in four populations
Ruben C. Arslan, Kai P. Willführ, Emma Frans, Karin J. H. Verweij, Mikko Myrskylä, Eckart Voland, Catarina Almqvist, Brendan P. Zietsch, Lars Penke
bioRxiv 042788; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/042788

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