A dynamic model of size-dependent reproductive effort in a sequential hermaphrodite: a counterexample to Williams's conjecture

The American Naturalist
L Rogers, R C Sargent

Abstract

In 1966, G. C. Williams showed that for iteroparous organisms, the level of reproductive effort that maximizes fitness is that which balances the marginal gains through current reproduction against the marginal losses to expected future reproduction. When, over an organism's lifetime, the value of future reproduction declines relative to the value of current reproduction, the level of effort allocated to current reproduction should always increase with increasing age. Conversely, when the value of future reproduction increases relative to the value of current reproduction, the level of effort allocated to current reproduction should decrease or remain at zero. While this latter pattern occurs commonly in species that exhibit a delayed age at first reproduction, it may also occur following an initial period of reproduction in some sex-changing organisms that experience a dramatic increase in reproductive potential as they grow larger. Indeed, this schedule of reproductive effort is predicted by models of "early" sex change; however, these models may arrive at this result incidentally because they consider only two reproductive states: on and off. In order to examine the schedule of reproductive effort in greater detail in a syst...Continue Reading

References

Oct 11, 1976·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·E G LeighR R Warner
Nov 24, 1975·Science·R R WarnerE G Leigh
Apr 7, 1986·Journal of Theoretical Biology·E L Charnov
Jun 1, 1969·The Quarterly Review of Biology·M T Ghiselin
Jul 1, 1979·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·W M Schaffer

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