Life Sciences Commons^™

Environmentally Sensitive Life-Cycle Traits Have Low Elasticity: Implications For Theory And Practice, Valery Forbes, Mette Olsen, Annemette Palmqvist, Peter Calow

Valery E Forbes

The relationships between population growth rate and the life-cycle traits contributing to it are nonlinear and variable. This has made it difficult for ecologists to consistently predict changes in population dynamics from observations on changes in life-cycle traits. We show that traits having a high sensitivity to chemical toxicants tend to have a low elasticity, meaning that changes in them have a relatively low impact on population growth rate, compared to other life-cycle traits. This makes evolutionary sense in that there should be selection against variability in population growth rate. In particular, we found that fecundity was generally more sensitive …