Department of Life Sciences, University of Lincoln, Lincoln LN6 7TS, UK; Department of Biology, University of Southern Denmark, Odense 5230, Denmark.
Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3SZ, UK.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2024 Sep;39(9):830-840. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2024.06.001. Epub 2024 Jul 13.
Life history strategies, which combine schedules of survival, development, and reproduction, shape how natural selection acts on species' heritable traits and organismal fitness. Comparative analyses have historically ranked life histories along a fast-slow continuum, describing a negative association between time allocation to reproduction and development versus survival. However, higher-quality, more representative data and analyses have revealed that life history variation cannot be fully accounted for by this single continuum. Moreover, studies often do not test predictions from existing theories and instead operate as exploratory exercises. To move forward, we offer three recommendations for future investigations: standardizing life history traits, overcoming taxonomic siloes, and using theory to move from describing to understanding life history variation across the Tree of Life.
生活史策略结合了生存、发育和繁殖的时间表，塑造了自然选择对物种可遗传特征和生物适应性的作用方式。历史上的比较分析将生活史沿着快速-缓慢的连续体进行排序，描述了分配给繁殖和发育的时间与生存之间的负相关关系。然而，更高质量、更具代表性的数据和分析表明，生活史的变化不能仅用这个单一的连续体来解释。此外，研究往往不检验现有理论的预测，而是作为探索性的练习。为了向前发展，我们为未来的研究提供了三个建议：标准化生活史特征、克服分类学孤岛以及利用理论从描述转向理解整个生命之树的生活史变化。
