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Life history evolution: successes, limitations, and prospects

Life history evolution: successes, limitations, and prospects  Life history theory tries to explain how evolution designs organisms to achieve reproductive success. The design is a solution to an ecological problem posed by the environment and subject to constraints intrinsic to the organism. Work on life histories has expanded the role of phenotypes in evolutionary theory, extending the range of predictions from genetic patterns to whole-organism traits directly connected to fitness. Among the questions answered are the following: Why are organisms small or large? Why do they mature early or late? Why do they have few or many offspring? Why do they have a short or a long life? Why must they grow old and die? The classical approach to life histories was optimization; it has had some convincing empirical success. Recently non-equilibrium approaches involving frequency-dependence, density-dependence, evolutionary game theory, adaptive dynamics, and explicit population dynamics have supplanted optimization as the preferred approach. They have not yet had as much empirical success, but there are logical reasons to prefer them, and they may soon extend the impact of life history theory into population dynamics and interspecific interactions in coevolving communities. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Naturwissenschaften Springer Journals

Life history evolution: successes, limitations, and prospects

Stearns, Stephen C.
Naturwissenschaften , Volume 87 (11) – Dec 5, 2000
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References (39)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
Subject
Life Sciences; Life Sciences, general; Environment, general
ISSN
0028-1042
eISSN
1432-1904
DOI
10.1007/s001140050763
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

 Life history theory tries to explain how evolution designs organisms to achieve reproductive success. The design is a solution to an ecological problem posed by the environment and subject to constraints intrinsic to the organism. Work on life histories has expanded the role of phenotypes in evolutionary theory, extending the range of predictions from genetic patterns to whole-organism traits directly connected to fitness. Among the questions answered are the following: Why are organisms small or large? Why do they mature early or late? Why do they have few or many offspring? Why do they have a short or a long life? Why must they grow old and die? The classical approach to life histories was optimization; it has had some convincing empirical success. Recently non-equilibrium approaches involving frequency-dependence, density-dependence, evolutionary game theory, adaptive dynamics, and explicit population dynamics have supplanted optimization as the preferred approach. They have not yet had as much empirical success, but there are logical reasons to prefer them, and they may soon extend the impact of life history theory into population dynamics and interspecific interactions in coevolving communities.

Journal

Naturwissenschaften – Springer Journals

Published: Dec 5, 2000

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