Journal article
Capital versus income breeding in a seasonal environment
National Institute of Aquatic Resources, Technical University of Denmark1
Section for Marine Ecology and Oceanography, National Institute of Aquatic Resources, Technical University of Denmark2
Centre for Ocean Life, National Institute of Aquatic Resources, Technical University of Denmark3
Akvaplan-niva AS4
The allocation of resources between growth, storage, and reproduction is a key trade-off in the life-history strategies of organisms. A central dichotomy is between capital breeders and income breeders. Capital breeders build reserves that allow them to spawn at a later time independently of food availability, while income breeders allocate ingested food directly to reproduction.
Motivated by copepod studies, we use an analytical model to compare the fitness of income with capital breeding in a deterministic seasonal environment. We analyze how the fitness of breeding strategies depend on feeding season duration and size at maturity. Small capital breeders perform better in short feeding seasons but fall behind larger individuals when the length of the feeding season increases.
Income breeding favors smaller individuals as their short generation time allows for multiple generations within a year and thereby achieve a high annual growth rate, outcompeting capital breeders in long feeding seasons. Therefore, we expect to find a dominance of small income breeders in temperate waters, while large capital breeders should dominate high latitudes where the spring is short and intense.
This pattern is evident in nature, particularly in organisms with a generation time of a year or less.
Language: | English |
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Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
Year: | 2014 |
Pages: | 466-476 |
ISSN: | 15375323 and 00030147 |
Types: | Journal article |
DOI: | 10.1086/677926 |
ORCIDs: | Andersen, Ken Haste and Visser, André W. |