What is life history strategies in ecology?
Life-history strategies are based on the characteristics of organisms that affect their fitness. Two environmental factors important in determining the life-history strategy of organisms, including sea urchins, are stress, conditions that reduce production and disturbance, partial or total destruction of biomass.
What are life history strategies?
A life history strategy is the “age- and stage-specific patterns” and timing of events that make up an organism’s life, such as birth, weaning, maturation, death, etc.
What are the three trade-offs that are most central to life history theory?
Those trade-offs that have received most attention include (1) current reproduction versus survival; (2) current versus future reproduction; (3) current reproduction versus parental growth; (4) current reproduction versus parental condition; and (5) number versus size of offspring.
What does life history include?
Life history traits include growth rate; age and size at sexual maturity; the temporal pattern or schedule of reproduction; the number, size, and sex ratio of offspring; the distribution of intrinsic or extrinsic mortality rates (e.g., patterns of senescence); and patterns of dormancy and dispersal.
What is fast life history strategy?
Life history theories predict that organisms adopt a faster life history strategy, i.e. a higher investment in current as opposed to future reproduction, in response to several environmental factors.
What is a life history pattern?
The life history of a species is the pattern of survival and reproduction events typical for a member of the species (essentially, its lifecycle). Life history patterns evolve by natural selection, and they represent an “optimization” of tradeoffs between growth, survival, and reproduction.
Why have so many different life history strategies evolved and been maintained among animals and plants?
Strong levels of environmental variation can create stressful conditions for the organisms that experience them. Many of the adaptations that allow organisms to deal with or escape these kinds of variability have created the diversity of life histories currently observed in nature.
What environmental factors influence the evolution of life history strategies?
What is slow life history strategies?
A slow Life History Strategy or “speed” (LHS), also known as a high-K strategy (Figueredo et al., 2005) prioritizes somatic effort (i.e. investment in future reproduction) over reproductive effort, parental effort over mating effort, and quality of offspring over quantity of offspring, whereas a fast LHS prioritizes …
What is a slow life history strategy?
Conversely, a slower life history strategy generally develops in a resource abundant, predictable environment, associated with minimal risk to life. People with a slower life history strategy generally experience slower development with delayed maturation, and are more future orientated (Del Giudice et al., 2015).
What is R and K reproductive strategy?
The symbols r and K originate in the mathematics of population biology and refer to 2 ends of a continuum in which a compensatory exchange occurs between gamete production (the r-strategy) and longevity (the K-strategy).
What is the difference between K strategist and R strategist?
The key difference between r strategist and K strategist is that the r strategist lives in unstable and unpredictable environments while the K strategist lives in more stable environment. Because of this environmental conditions, the r strategists produce many offspring while the K strategists produce few offsprings.
What is R and K selection and how do they differ?
r-selection: On one extreme are the species that are highly r-selected. r is for reproduction. Such a species puts only a small investment of resources into each offspring, but produces many such low effort babies….r- and K-selection.
| Characteristic | r | K |
|---|---|---|
| Lifespan | short | long |
| Early mortality | high | low |
What is meant by R vs K reproductive strategies?
What is the difference between K selective & R selective populations?
K-selected species possess relatively stable populations and tend to produce relatively low numbers of offspring; however, individual offspring tend to be quite large in comparison with r-selected species.
What is an R strategist and a K strategist?
r strategist is an organism living in unstable environments. Hence, they undergo rapid reproduction to stabilize themselves. Whereas, K strategist is an organism living in stable environments. Therefore, they are high in population and do not need to undergo rapid reproduction.
What is the difference between Autecology and Synecology?
Autecology is the study of individual organism or individual species. It is also known as population ecology. Synecology is the study of group of organisms of different species which are associated together as a unit in form of a community. Also known as community ecology.
How do life history patterns evolve by natural selection?
Life history patterns evolve by natural selection, and they represent an “optimization” of tradeoffs between growth, survival, and reproduction. One tradeoff is between number of offspring produced and the amount of energy (both physical resources and parental care) put into each offspring. Timing of first reproduction is another tradeoff.
What is the major tradeoff in life history strategies?
One major tradeoff in life history strategies is between number of offspring and a parent’s investment in the individual offspring.
What is the metabolic theory of ecology?
Metabolic rate, which varies with body size and temperature, influences rates of resource allocation to growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Sibly shows that many life history traits covary with mass, so that the metabolic theory of ecology can help identify broad patterns and constraints.
What are the characteristics of life history?
For humans, life history involves a late start to reproduction, few offspring, and the ability to reproduce multiple times. We can define the life history of a species as its lifecycle, and in particular, the lifecycle features related to survival and reproduction.