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Life History Theory - Science topic
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Questions related to Life History Theory
It seems that they both study social influences on people's life, but they originate from different backgrounds(the former one is from social studies and the later one is from biology). Why researchers didn't combine them? Or is there any differences between them?
It is widely accepted that the major factor affecting the evolutionary optimization of animal life histories is energy balance, therefore studies focus on the energy costs and benefits of adaptations, the efficiency of energy acquisition and investment, and limits to energy budgets. However, at the very least in heterotrophs, equally important seems to be the problem of maintaining stoichiometric balance.
There are two approaches in eco-evo studies that consider the matter balance as complementary to the energy balance: ecological stoichiometry and nutritional geometry. However, in my opinion, such studies are limited and after 30 years after Tilman's and Reiners' works (below), still "energocentric" point of view dominates in ecology and evolution, that carelessly underrates the need to balance the diet also in terms of the matter (including the Law of Conservation of Mass).
This is only my point of view, possibly the wrong one. I would like to ask all of you: what is your opinion?
My question was introduced as briefly as possible, don't hesitate to dig deeper and extend it!
Below I present four important studies related to the topic, just to start with.
Kind regards,
Michał Filipiak
I am comparing the Von Bert life history parameters of three populations of a single shark species. In two populations I have negative values for the birth size estimate. One population (Western Cape) is biased towards older, mature individuals whilst the other (Eastern Cape) is biased towards small juveniles. The Eastern Cape population also shows an unrealistically large estimate of asymptotic length which I have found to be cause by small sample size and a bias towards small specimens.
I am well aware of the fact that it is not possible to have a negative birth size. I cannot, however, find information as to why this might happen and if there is anything that can be done to correct these values.
Can anyone shed some light on these unrealistic asymptotic length and size at birth estimates?
I am comparing longevity using as a proxy simulations of maximum conditional lifespan based on published matrix models. Most of the transitions that I’m using are based on annual population changes (from 1 year to the next year), however, some other transition matrices are based on variable time intervals (months, 2-year, 5-year, etc… How should I standardize these values to make them comparable? An easy way I have in mind would be just to divide the estimated lifespan by 12 in the case of monthly matrices or multiply by 2 when dealing with lifespan calculated based on biannual matrices, but I am not sure if that would be appropriated. Any suggestion?
Are long-lived species more resistant to extreme disturbances (i. e. heat waves, fires, hurricanes, etc) than shorter-lived species? If I’m right, longevity is driven by survival rates. Therefore, I expect long-lived species to be more resistant to external disturbances (at least disturbances that were frequent in the past), unfortunately I haven't found any empirical evidence of this pattern. I’d welcome any reference related to this topic. Thanks.
I am interested in an aspect of life history theory, but I can't find any previous literature on the subject. How do long-lived organisms make decisions about resource use? For example, since survivorship is high, they could put a burst of resources into repro a little at a time over many years, or many other possibilities.
For example, a turtle that comes across a carcass, or a tree root that happens into a large pocket of high nutrient soil. Short-lived organisms might pop that sort of thing right into reproduction or growth right away, but long-lived organisms have many more options. Any papers on this?
There are some measures for slow LHS (alhb, mini-k, hkss), but I could not find a scale for measuring fast life history strategy in humans. Does such a scale exist? Will it make sense to develop such a scale (since I don't think that fast LHS could be accurately measured with K-strategy scales, for example by just inverting it)? Thanks in advance for your hints!