The Basics of Life History Theory

A female North Pacific Giant Octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini) lives three to four years; it lays thousands of eggs in a single bout and then dies. By contrast, a mature Coast Redwood Tree (Sequoia sempervirens) lives for many hundreds of years and produces millions of seeds each year (Figure 1). As these two examples illustrate, organisms differ dramatically in how they develop, the time they take to grow, when they become mature, how many offspring of a particular size they produce, and how long they live. Together, the age-, size-, or stage-specific patterns of development, growth, maturation, reproduction, survival, and lifespan define an organism's life cycle, its life history. Citation: Fabian, D. & Flatt, T. (2012) Life History Evolution. Nature Education Knowledge 3(8):24 http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/life-history-e...