Co-occurrence of contrasting life-history strategies in a metapopulation inhabiting temporally variable and stable breeding sites (original) (raw)

Life-history theory states that, during the lifetime of an individual, resources are allocated to either somatic maintenance or reproduction. Resource allocation trade-offs determine the evolution and ecology of life-history strategies and determine an organism position along the fast-slow continuum. Theory predicts that environmental stochasticity is an important driver of resource allocation and therefore life-history evolution. Highly stochastic environments are expected to increase uncertainty in reproductive success and select for iteroparity and a slowing down of the life history. To date, most empirical studies have used comparisons among species to examine these theoretical predictions. By contrast, few have investigated how environmental stochasticity affects life-history strategies at the intraspecific level. In this study, we examined how variation in breeding site stochasticity (among-year variability in pond volume and hydroperiod) promotes the co-occurrence of differen...