A Primer of Life Histories: Ecology, Evolution, and Application

Life histories can be defined as the means by which individuals (or more precisely genotypes) vary their age-or stage-specific expenditures of reproductive effort in response to genetic, phenotypic, and environmental correlates of survival and fecundity. Life histories reflect the expression of traits most closely related to individual fitness, such as age and size at maturity, number and size of offspring, and the timing of the expression of those traits throughout an individual's life. Li...