3,193 research outputs found
Mammal life-history evolution with size-dependent mortality
Size dependence of mortality over the ontogeny is added to life-history optimization schemes for mammal
Evolution of mammal life histories
If we assume that adult life span and age-at-maturity are described correctly by quarter power allometries across (typical) mammal species, we are tempted to look for some fundamental explanation. The explanation must acknowledge that within-species growth is sigmoid and not a power function at all, and that natural selection probably sets the age at maturity in the face of externally imposed mortality, while also allowing some mortality adjustment due to internal factors. This paper develops hypotheses to account for the above scaling rules and it predicts the numeric values of several new dimensionless numbers that interrelate growth, mortality and investment in cellular maintenance
Phenotypic evolution under Fisher\u27s fundamental theorem of natural selection
I show the basic connection between the optimization and quantitative genetic approach to adaptatio
The optimal balance between growth rate and survival in mammals
Evolutionary theory for life-history allometry in mammals is extended to include a trade-off between body-size growth rate and adult lifespan
Reproductive efficiencies in the evolution of life histories
Darwinian fitness is expressed as the product of 2 cost/benefit ratios
Natural selection and sex change in Pandalid shrimp: Test of a life history theory
This article presents a graphical approach to the genetical theory of sex change (similar to one recently applied to the evolution of simultaneous hermaphroditism). The graphs will help clarify a set of predictions to be tested against data from Pandalid shrimp. These shrimp are protandrous hermaphrodites (reproduce first as males). The goal is to use the genetical theory to predict the age of sex change. Since these shrimp show much geographic variation in this age, they provide a good opportunity to test the evolutionary model
Evolution of life history variation among female mammals
A unified approach is developed for the evolutionary structure of mammalian life histories; it blends together three basic components (individual growth or production rate as a function of body size, natural selection on age of maturity, and stable demography) to predict both the powers and the intercepts of the scaling allometry of life history variables to adult size. The theory also predicts the signs (+, -) of the correlations between life history variables when body size is held constant. Finally, the approach allows us to eliminate body size to predict the dimensionless relationships between the life history variables themselves
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