We develop a model for somatic growth in fishes that explicitly allows for the energy demand imposed by reproduction. We show that the von Bertalanffy (VB) equation provides a good description of somatic growth after maturity, but not before. We show that the parameters of the VB equation are simple functions of age at maturity and reproductive investment. We use this model to show how the ener...

Background and Aims Trait-based plant ecology attempts to use small numbers of functional traits to predict plant ecological strategies. However, a major gap exists between our understanding of organ-level ecophysiological traits and our understanding of whole-plant fitness and environmental adaptation. In this gap lie whole-plant organizational traits, including those that describe how plant b...

Several important fitness components in herbaceous perennial plants are commonly related to plant size: flowering probability, reproductive allocation and fecundity. However, evidence for such size-dependence of fitness components is mostly anecdotal and unconnected to other life history traits. Here we report size-dependence for flowering probability and reproductive allocation in 11 populatio...

Sexual dimorphism is typically a result of strong sexual selection on male traits used in male-male competition and subsequent female choice. However, in social species where reproduction is monopolized by one or a few individuals in a group, selection on secondary sexual characteristics may be strong in both sexes. Indeed, sexual dimorphism is reduced in many cooperatively breeding vertebrates...

During range-advance, individuals on the expanding edge of the population face a unique selective environment. In this study, we use a three-trait trade-off model to explore the evolution of dispersal, reproduction and competitive ability during range expansion. We show that range expansion greatly affects the evolution of life-history traits due to differing selection pressures at the front of...

Acquired energetic resources allocated to a particular trait cannot then be re-allocated to a different trait. This often results in a trade-off between survival and reproduction for the adults of many species, but such a trade-off may be manifested differently in juveniles not yet capable of reproduction. Whereas adults may allocate resources to current and/or future reproduction, juveniles ca...

Sheep in many areas of Australia and New Zealand experience periods of variable feed supply. Merino sheep can be bred to be more resilient to this varying feed supply. Resilient sheep lose less live weight when grazing poor quality pasture. However, we do not know if breeding for live weight change genetically affects reproduction. To estimate genetic correlations between live weight change and...

Evolutionary theories propose that aging is the result of a trade-off between self-maintenance and reproduction, and oxidative stress may play a crucial role in such a trade-off. Phenotypic manipulations have revealed that a high investment in reproduction leads to a decline in the organism's resistance to oxidative stress, which could in turn accelerate aging. Here, by using quantitative genet...

Resource allocation to different functions is central in life-history theory. Plasticity of functional traits allows clonal plants to regulate their resource allocation to meet changing environments. In this study, biomass allocation traits of clonal plants were categorized into absolute biomass for vegetative growth vs. for reproduction, and their relative ratios based on a data set including ...

Reproduction is an economically important complex composite trait in sheep. Genetic improvement of composite traits can occur by selection for individual components traits, some combination of individual component traits, or by direct selection for the composite trait. This review discusses the responses of selecting directly for litter weight weaned compared to selection responses for one of i...