Vitamin E Supplementation—But Not Induced Oxidative Stress—Influences Telomere Dynamics During Early Development in Wild Passerines Pérez-Rodríguez, Lorenzo Redondo, Tomás Ruiz-Mata, Rocío Camacho, Carlos Moreno Rueda, Gregorio Potti, Jaime Antioxidant Development Diquat Growth Micronutrient Nestling Telomere attrition Tocopherol The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2019.00173/full#supplementary-material We thank F. Miranda and Laboratory of Ecophysiology-EBD (ISO9001:2015 and ISO14001:2015) for assistance with lab analyses. E. Roldán, at the National Museum of Natural History-CSIC, helped with sample conservation and transport. Telomere length is a marker of cellular senescence that relates to different components of individual fitness. Oxidative stress is often claimed as a main proximate factor contributing to telomere attrition, although the importance of this factor in vivo has recently been challenged. Early development represents an ideal scenario to address this hypothesis because it is characterized by the highest rates of telomere attrition of the life and by an arguably high susceptibility to oxidative stress. We tested the effect of oxidative stress on telomere dynamics during early development by exposing pied flycatcher nestlings (Ficedula hypoleuca) to either an oxidative challenge (diquat injections), an antioxidant (vitamin E) or control treatments (PBS injections and supplementation with vehicle substance). We found no effects of treatments on average telomere change during the nestling period. However, vitamin E supplementation, which increased growth, removed the association between initial telomere length and telomere attrition. Diquat-treated nestlings, by contrast, showed no differences in growth or telomere dynamics with respect to controls. These results do not support the hypothesis that oxidative stress is the main direct mechanism explaining telomere attrition in vivo, and highlight the importance of micronutrient intake during early development on telomere dynamics. Studies addressing alternative action pathways of vitamins on growth and telomere dynamics, perhaps via restoration mechanisms, would provide important insights on the proximate factors affecting telomere attrition during this critical phase of life. 2020-05-12T11:02:06Z 2020-05-12T11:02:06Z 2019-05-21 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Pérez-Rodríguez L, Redondo T, Ruiz-Mata R, Camacho C, Moreno-Rueda G and Potti J (2019) Vitamin E Supplementation—But Not Induced Oxidative Stress—Influences Telomere Dynamics During Early Development in Wild Passerines. Front. Ecol. Evol. 7:173. [doi: 10.3389/fevo.2019.00173] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/61971 10.3389/fevo.2019.00173 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España Frontiers Media