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Size And Temperature In The Evolution Of Fish Life Histories, Eric Charnov, James Gillooly
Size And Temperature In The Evolution Of Fish Life Histories, Eric Charnov, James Gillooly
Biology Faculty & Staff Publications
Body size and temperature are the two most important variables affecting nearly all biological rates and times, especially individual growth or production rates. By favoring an optimal maturation age and reproductive allocation, natural selection links individual growth to the mortality schedule. A recent model for evolution of life histories for species with indeterminate growth, which includes most fish, successfully predicts the numeric values of two key dimensionless numbers and the allometry of the average reproductive allocation versus maturation size across species. Here we use this new model to predict the relationships of age-at-maturity, adult mortality and reproductive effort to environmental …
Allometric Scaling Of Production And Life-History Variation In Vascular Plants, Brian Enquist, Geoffrey West, Eric Charnov, James Brown
Allometric Scaling Of Production And Life-History Variation In Vascular Plants, Brian Enquist, Geoffrey West, Eric Charnov, James Brown
Biology Faculty & Staff Publications
A prominent feature of comparative life histories is the well documented negative correlation between growth rate and life span. Patterns of resource allocation during growth and reproduction reflect life-history differences between species. This is particularly striking in tropical forests, where tree species can differ greatly in their rates of growth and ages of maturity but still attain similar canopy sizes. Here we provide a theoretical framework for relating life-history variables to rates of production, dM/ dt, where M is above-ground mass and t is time. As metabolic rate limits production as an individual grows, dM=dt ~M3=4. Incorporating interspecific variation in …
Grandmothering, Menopause, And The Evolution Of Human Life Histories, K. Hawkes, J.F. O'Connell, N.G. Blurton Jones, H. Alvarez, Eric Charnov
Grandmothering, Menopause, And The Evolution Of Human Life Histories, K. Hawkes, J.F. O'Connell, N.G. Blurton Jones, H. Alvarez, Eric Charnov
Biology Faculty & Staff Publications
Long postmenopausal lifespans distinguish humans from all other primates. This pattern may have evolved with mother—child food sharing, a practice that allowed aging females to enhance their daughters fertility, thereby increasing selection against senescence. Combined with Charnov's dimensionless assembly rules for mammalian life histories, this hypothesis also accounts for our late maturity, small size at weaning, and high fertility. It has implications for past human habitat choice and social organization and for ideas about the importance of extended learning and paternal provisioning in human evolution.