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Life History definitions

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  • Life History
    An organism's overall strategy for allocating energy, resources, and time to growth, survival, and reproduction.
  • Survivorship
    The proportion of individuals in a population that survive to a specific age, reflecting chances of reaching adulthood.
  • Fecundity
    The reproductive capacity, often measured as the average number of viable offspring produced per event or lifetime.
  • Mortality
    The proportion of individuals in a population dying at a given age, essentially the inverse of survivorship.
  • Trade-off
    A situation where increasing one trait, like survival, reduces another, such as reproductive output, due to limited resources.
  • Semelparity
    A reproductive strategy involving a single, massive reproductive event, often followed by death, as seen in century plants.
  • Iteroparity
    A reproductive strategy with multiple reproductive events throughout an organism's life, which may be seasonal or continuous.
  • Seasonal Iteroparity
    A pattern where reproductive events occur only during specific breeding seasons, resulting in evenly spaced offspring production.
  • Continuous Iteroparity
    A pattern where reproductive events can occur at any time, without fixed intervals, once reproductive maturity is reached.
  • Lifespan
    The expected duration of an organism's life, often associated with its survivorship and reproductive strategy.
  • Fitness
    The overall ability to survive and reproduce, shaped by how energy and resources are allocated across life history traits.
  • Reproductive Event
    An occurrence during which an organism produces offspring, which may happen once or multiple times depending on strategy.
  • Developmental Growth
    The process by which an organism increases in size and complexity, influenced by energy allocation decisions.