Abstract
The study of life history strategies has a long history in ecology and evolution, but determining the underlying mechanisms driving the evolution of life history variation and its consequences for population regulation remains a major challenge. In this study, a food web model with constant environmental conditions was used to demonstrate how multi-species consumer–resource interactions (food-web interactions) can create variation in the duration of the adult stage, age of maturation, and fecundity among species. The model included three key ecological processes: size-dependent species interactions, energetics, and transition among developmental stages. Resultant patterns of life history variation were consistent with previous empirical observations of the life history strategies of aquatic organisms referred to as periodic, equilibrium, and opportunistic strategies (trilateral continuums of life history strategies). Results from the simulation model suggest that these three life history strategies can emerge from food web interactions even when abiotic environmental conditions are held constant.
Highlights
The trilateral life history model has been proposed to describe variation in observed life history strategies among species[1]
The importance of species interactions in the studies of life history evolution is still underappreciated. This is especially true with the studies of trilateral life history variations as most recent studies focused on the effects of physical environmental conditions[22,23,24,25]
The adult duration and generation time, of species with randomly assigned physical traits exhibited bimodal distributions under food web interactions (Fig. 1a and b), indicating that the food webs were dominated by species that were either long-lived or short-lived, with few species having intermediate life spans
Summary
The trilateral life history model has been proposed to describe variation in observed life history strategies among species[1]. Life history variation can be predicted by trade-offs among three variables: the age of maturation (affecting generation time), investment per offspring (affecting survival to the adult stage), and fecundity. The endpoints of these three variables are termed equilibrium, periodic, and opportunistic strategies. This is especially true with the studies of trilateral life history variations as most recent studies focused on the effects of physical environmental conditions[22,23,24,25] It is still not clear what types of life history strategies are selected when multiple stage-structured populations of different species are experiencing consumer-resource interactions. Recent studies have demonstrated the importance of structured populations in community dynamics[30,31,32], and populations in the model need to be structured to accommodate a diversity of life history strategies
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