Hot and dry weather damages the DNA of fairy wren nestlings and causes them to age earlier and die younger, according to research that has implications for the effect of climate warming on other species, including humans.

Monash University biologists have undertaken a 17-year study of a population of endangered purple-crowned fairy wrens in the Kimberley, Western Australia, and used blood samples to measure a part of their DNA called a telomere.

Telomeres are pieces of DNA on the ends of chromosomes that prevent them from becoming frayed or tangled (like the aglets at the end of shoelaces). When they become too short to do their job, the ageing process is accelerated.

One of the researchers, Professor Anne Peters from the university’s School of Biological Sciences, said the study discovered wren nestlings that grew up in hot and dry conditions had shorter telomeres.

As a result, these nestlings had a reduced capacity to deal with further DNA damage, meaning they aged earlier and died younger, Peters said.

It appears that the hotter things become, the worse the damage to the telomeres of the week-old nestlings. But this only applies if it’s dry – if it’s wet, the birds’ DNA is unaffected.

“When telomeres get too short, the cell becomes unviable and they malfunction,” Peters says. “At a body level, you start to age. If that goes on for too long, then you die. Long telomeres are great; short telomeres are not”.

The finding, published on Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, builds on previous research from Monash that found the telomeres in seven-day-old nestlings predicted how long they would live and how many young they would produce.