Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Brown JH
PROVIDER: S-EPMC1693791 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Nov
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Brown James H JH Sibly Richard M RM
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20061107 47
The recently formulated metabolic theory of ecology has profound implications for the evolution of life histories. Metabolic rate constrains the scaling of production with body mass, so that larger organisms have lower rates of production on a mass-specific basis than smaller ones. Here, we explore the implications of this constraint for life-history evolution. We show that for a range of very simple life histories, Darwinian fitness is equal to birth rate minus death rate. So, natural selection ...[more]