Silver‐spoon upbringing improves early‐life fitness but promotes reproductive ageing in a wild bird

Early‐life conditions can have long‐lasting effects and organisms that experience a poor start in life are often expected to age at a faster rate. Alternatively, individuals raised in high‐quality environments can overinvest in early‐reproduction resulting in rapid ageing. Here we use a long‐term experimental manipulation of early‐life conditions in a natural population of collared flycatchers (Ficedula albicollis), to show that females raised in a low‐competition environment (artificially reduced broods) have higher early‐life reproduction but lower late‐life reproduction than females raised in high‐competition environment (artificially increased broods). Reproductive success of high‐competition females peaked in late‐life, when low‐competition females were already in steep reproductive decline and suffered from a higher mortality rate. Our results demonstrate that ‘silver‐spoon’ natal conditions increase female early‐life performance at the cost of faster reproductive ageing and increased late‐life mortality. These findings demonstrate experimentally that natal environment shapes individual variation in reproductive and actuarial ageing in nature. Early‐life conditions can have long‐lasting effects and organisms that experience a poor start in life are often expected to age at a faster rate. Alternatively, individuals raised in high‐quality environments can over‐invest in early‐reproduction resulting in rapid ageing. Our results demonstrate experimentally that ‘silver‐spoon’ natal conditions increase early‐life performance at the cost of earlier onset of reproductive ageing.