School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, 3800, Australia.
Ecol Lett. 2015 Feb;18(2):174-81. doi: 10.1111/ele.12402. Epub 2014 Dec 23.
Environmental predictability is predicted to shape the evolution of life histories. Two key types of environmental predictability, seasonality and environmental colour, may influence life-history evolution independently but formal considerations of both and how they relate to life history are exceedingly rare. Here, in a global biogeographical analysis of over 800 marine invertebrates, we explore the relationships between both forms of environmental predictability and three fundamental life-history traits: location of larval development (aplanktonic vs. planktonic), larval developmental mode (feeding vs. non-feeding) and offspring size. We found that both dispersal potential and offspring size related to environmental predictability, but the relationships depended on both the environmental factor as well as the type of predictability. Environments that were more seasonal in food availability had a higher prevalence of species with a planktonic larval stage. Future studies should consider both types of environmental predictability as each can strongly affect life-history evolution.
环境可预测性预计会塑造生物生活史的进化。两种关键类型的环境可预测性，季节性和环境颜色，可能会独立影响生活史的进化，但对于这两者以及它们与生活史的关系的正式考虑却极为罕见。在这里，我们对超过 800 种海洋无脊椎动物进行了全球生物地理分析，探索了这两种形式的环境可预测性与三个基本生活史特征之间的关系：幼虫发育的位置（浮游生物与浮游生物），幼虫发育模式（摄食与非摄食）和后代大小。我们发现，扩散潜力和后代大小都与环境可预测性有关，但这种关系取决于环境因素和可预测性的类型。在食物供应方面季节性更强的环境中，具有浮游幼虫阶段的物种更为普遍。未来的研究应该同时考虑这两种类型的环境可预测性，因为它们都可能强烈影响生活史的进化。
