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- Title
How much should reproduction cost?
- Authors
Hochachka, Wesley
- Abstract
The ultimate goal of investigating costs of reproduction is to see whether evolutionary tradeoffs are important determinants of observed variation in fecundity. However, the current empirical approach to studying costs of reproduction, manipulation of brood size, is only capable of demonstrating the existence of a cost of reproduction. Little attention has been paid to the biological significance of a cost of reproduction, when one is found. In this paper, I outline an analytical framework that can be used in conjunction with brood manipulation experiments to determine whether an observed cost of reproduction is capable of limiting clutch sizes at observed levels. In addition, this framework can be used to determine whether patterns of variation in fecundity within a population are caused by evolutionary trade-offs between present and future reproduction. Two patterns used as examples are increase in clutch size with female age and intraseasonal decline in clutch size in birds. Because increasing brood size can have several effects on adults (e.g., decreased adult survival, decreased future fecundity of surviving adults, decreased care given to offspring in the enlarged brood), there is a need to understand how all these effects are interrelated. The analytical framework outlined in this paper allows one to express a cost of reproduction (i.e., a decrease in future fecundity of parents) and decreases in the rate of survival of offspring from the current nesting attempt in a common “currency.” This paper also suggests how brood manipulation experiments can distinguish between variation in clutch size resulting from life-history trade-offs and variation that results from differences in parental ability or territory quality. The analytical methods can be readily applied to other taxa.
- Publication
Behavioral Ecology, 1992, Vol 3, Issue 1, p42
- ISSN
1045-2249
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/beheco/3.1.42