Life-history plasticity and sustainable exploitation: a theory of growth compensation applied to walleye management

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel P. Lester ◽  
Brian J. Shuter ◽  
Paul Venturelli ◽  
Daniel Nadeau
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Growth Compensation ◽  
Sustainable Exploitation

A Primer of Life Histories

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Hutchings
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Life History Traits ◽  
Reproductive Effort ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
Academic Experience ◽  
Sustainable Exploitation ◽  
Evolution Of Life ◽  
Opportune Time

Life histories describe how genotypes schedule their reproductive effort throughout life in response to factors that affect their survival and fecundity. Life histories are solutions that selection has produced to solve the problem of how to persist in a given environment. These solutions differ tremendously within and among species. Some organisms mature within months of attaining life, others within decades; some produce few, large offspring as opposed to numerous, small offspring; some reproduce many times throughout their lives while others die after reproducing just once. The exponential pace of life-history research provides an opportune time to engage and re-engage new generations of students and researchers on the fundamentals and applications of life-history theory. Chapters 1 through 4 describe the fundamentals of life-history theory. Chapters 5 through 8 focus on the evolution of life-history traits. Chapters 9 and 10 summarize how life-history theory and prediction has been applied within the contexts of conservation and sustainable exploitation. This primer offers an effective means of rendering the topic accessible to readers from a broad range of academic experience and research expertise.

scholarly journals Fitness implications of sex-specific catch-up growth in Nephila senegalensis, a spider with extreme reversed SSD

PeerJ ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. e4050 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Neumann ◽  
Nicole Ruppel ◽  
Jutta M. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Life History Traits ◽  
Life Time ◽  
Early Growth ◽  
Growth Restriction ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Growth Compensation ◽  
Full Compensation ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
Delayed Maturation

Background Animal growth is often constrained by unfavourable conditions and divergences from optimal body size can be detrimental to an individual’s fitness, particularly in species with determinate growth and a narrow time-frame for life-time reproduction. Growth restriction in early juvenile stages can later be compensated by means of plastic developmental responses, such as adaptive catch-up growth (the compensation of growth deficits through delayed development). Although sex differences regarding the mode and degree of growth compensation have been coherently predicted from sex-specific fitness payoffs, inconsistent results imply a need for further research. We used the African Nephila senegalensis, representing an extreme case of female-biased sexual size dimorphism (SSD), to study fitness implications of sex-specific growth compensation. We predicted effective catch-up growth in early food-restricted females to result in full compensation of growth deficits and a life-time fecundity (LTF) equivalent to unrestricted females. Based on a stronger trade-off between size-related benefits and costs of a delayed maturation, we expected less effective catch-up growth in males. Methods We tracked the development of over one thousand spiders in different feeding treatments, e.g., comprising a fixed period of early low feeding conditions followed by unrestricted feeding conditions, permanent unrestricted feeding conditions, or permanent low feeding conditions as a control. In a second experimental section, we assessed female fitness by measuring LTF in a subset of females. In addition, we tested whether compensatory development affected the reproductive lifespan in both sexes and analysed genotype-by-treatment interactions as a potential cause of variation in life-history traits. Results Both sexes delayed maturation to counteract early growth restriction, but only females achieved full compensation of adult body size. Female catch-up growth resulted in equivalent LTF compared to unrestricted females. We found significant interactions between experimental treatments and sex as well as between treatments and family lineage, suggesting that family-specific responses contribute to the unusually large variation of life-history traits in Nephila spiders. Our feeding treatments had no effect on the reproductive lifespan in either sex. Discussion Our findings are in line with predictions of life-history theory and corroborate strong fecundity selection to result in full female growth compensation. Males showed incomplete growth compensation despite a delayed development, indicating relaxed selection on large size and a stronger trade-off between late maturation and size-related benefits. We suggest that moderate catch-up growth in males is still adaptive as a ‘bet-hedging’ strategy to disperse unavoidable costs between life-history traits affected by early growth restriction (the duration of development and adult size).

Introducing the symposium "Building on Beverton's legacy: life history variation and fisheries management"

2005 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 725-729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J Shuter ◽  
Peter A Abrams
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Fisheries Management ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Conservation Management ◽  
Human Impacts ◽  
Life History Variation ◽  
Selective Pressures ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sustainable Exploitation ◽  
Evolutionary Changes

Throughout his career, Ray Beverton displayed an interest in the life history diversity in marine and freshwater fish. The papers collected here describe recent research directed at documenting this diversity and understanding both its consequences and the processes that generate it. There are three themes: factors that direct life history dynamics; fishing as a force that redirects life history dynamics; and roles for life history statics in conservation management. The "dynamics" papers show that fish life histories can evolve in response to both natural and harvest-induced selective pressures. Evolution in response to harvesting can be rapid, with potentially dramatic effects on population dynamics and sustainable exploitation. The "statics" articles demonstrate how maturity traits combine with shifts in habitat use to shape the sensitivity of a population to habitat loss. Life history shifts can dramatically alter the safety of harvesting policies that were prudent in the past; shifts of the predators or prey of a harvested species can be as important as shifts in the harvested species itself. Further work on the ecological circumstances that favour different degrees of plastic or genetic life history responses to human impacts are needed to prevent inadvertent induction of long-lasing evolutionary changes in fish life histories.

Interrelationships of factors of social development are more complex than Life History Theory predicts

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boris Kotchoubey
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Strong Correlations ◽  
Behavioral Features

Abstract Life History Theory (LHT) predicts a monotonous relationship between affluence and the rate of innovations and strong correlations within a cluster of behavioral features. Although both predictions can be true in specific cases, they are incorrect in general. Therefore, the author's explanations may be right, but they do not prove LHT and cannot be generalized to other apparently similar processes.

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