SEASONALITY MAINTAINS ALTERNATIVE LIFE-HISTORY PHENOTYPES

Alternative reproductive tactics and life history phenotypes

Alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs) coexisting within a population are found in many organisms. Their existence has been an enduring puzzle in evolutionary biology. Why should selection produce distinctly different alternatives to reach the same goal? How can such alternative solutions coexist in a population? What determines their evolutionary stability? Here we outline ultimate and proxim...

Disturbance maintains alternative biome states.

Understanding the mechanisms controlling the distribution of biomes remains a challenge. Although tropical biome distribution has traditionally been explained by climate and soil, contrasting vegetation types often occur as mosaics with sharp boundaries under very similar environmental conditions. While evidence suggests that these biomes are alternative states, empirical broad-scale support to...

Life history correlates of alternative migratory strategies in American Dippers.

Partial migration is thought to be a critical step in the evolution of avian migration, but data on the life history correlates of alternative migratory strategies are extremely limited. We have studied a partially migratory population of American Dippers since 1999. This population is composed of sedentary individuals (residents) that maintain the same territory year round and altitudinal migr...

A Functional Genomic Investigation of an Alternative Life History Strategy

Reproductive seasonality in captive wild ruminants: implications for biogeographical adaptation, photoperiodic control, and life history.

Many ruminant species show seasonal patterns of reproduction. Causes for this are widely debated, and include adaptations to seasonal availability of resources (with cues either from body condition in more tropical, or from photoperiodism in higher latitude habitats) and/or defence strategies against predators. Conclusions so far are limited to datasets with less than 30 species. Here, we use a...