Abstract
Life history theory deals with the evolution of those traits that shape an organism's age schedules of birth and death. Many biological traits potentially affect the patterns of reproduction and mortality throughout the life cycle. Life history traits therefore constitute a loosely defined set of morphological, developmental, or behavioral characteristics. Despite this diversity of traits, by the early 1990s, the life history evolution had grown successfully into a very productive field organized around a few central questions with a very strong unifying theoretical background, grounded in both optimization principles and quantitative genetics. Then, the realm of most studies of life history theory was that of a single, large, undisturbed, and spatially homogeneous population. This chapter reviews the empirical and theoretical studies, published since 1997, that have addressed the evolution of life history traits in a metapopulation context.
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