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Long‐term studies are critical for ecological understanding, but they are underutilized as inclusive opportunities for training ecologists. We use our perspective from the Año Nuevo elephant seal programme along with surveys from community members to propose that long‐term studies could be better leveraged to promote inclusive education and professional development in ecology. Drawing on our experiences as mentors and mentees, we demonstrate how long‐term studies can use their resources, including rich data, robust logistics and extensive professional networks, to improve recruitment and retention of diverse groups of trainees. However, practices such as unpaid labour and unclear expectations limit the utility of these resources for diversifying ecology. We discuss how we have structured our long‐term study to create more inclusive and equitable training opportunities. Acknowledging these transformations required substantial resources, we highlight funding sources and organizational partnerships that can promote investment in long‐term studies for broadening participation. 

Abstract Maternal age can influence reproductive success and offspring fitness, but the timing, magnitude and direction of those impacts are not well understood. Evolutionary theory predicts that selection on fertility senescence is stronger than maternal effect senescence, and therefore, the rate of maternal effect senescence will be faster than fertility senescence.We used a 36‐year study of northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) to investigate reproductive senescence. Our dataset included 103,746 sightings of 1203 known‐age female northern elephant seals.We hypothesized that fertility (maternal reproductive success), offspring survival and recruitment into the breeding population, and male offspring production would decline with advanced maternal age. Furthermore, we hypothesized that older females would shorten their moulting haul out to allow for more time spent foraging.We found evidence for both fertility and maternal effect senescence, but no evidence for senescence impacting offspring recruitment or sex ratio. Breeding probability declined from 96.4% (95% CI: 94.8%–97.5%) at 11 years old to 89.7% (81.9%–94.3%) at 19 years old, and the probability of offspring survival declined from 30.3% (23.6%–38.0%) at 11 years old to 9.1% (3.2%–22.9%) at 19 years old.The rates of decline for fertility and maternal effect senescence were not different from each other. However, maternal effect senescence had a substantially greater impact on the number of offspring surviving to age 1 compared to fertility senescence. Compared to a hypothetical non‐senescent population, maternal effect senescence resulted in 5.3% fewer surviving pups, whereas fertility senescence resulted in only 0.3% fewer pups produced per year. These results are consistent with evolutionary theory predicting weaker selection on maternal effect than fertility senescence. Maternal effect senescence may therefore be more influential on population dynamics than fertility senescence in some systems.