Extreme climatic events may influence individual-level variability in phenotypes, survival, and reproduction, and thereby drive the pace of evolution. Here, we quantify how experiencing major hurricanes influences individual life courses in the Cayo Santiago rhesus macaques. Our results show that major hurricanes increase heterogeneity in reproductive life courses despite an average reduction in mean fertility and survival, i.e. shortened life courses. In agreement with this, the population is expected to achieve stable population dynamics faster after a hurricane. Our work suggests that natural disasters force individuals into new niches to potentially reduce strong competition during poor environments where mean reproduction and survival are compromised. We also demonstrate that variance in lifetime reproductive success and longevity are differently affected by hurricanes, and such variability is mostly driven by survival.

Generation time has previously been the focus of comparative life history analyses. Here we examine three metrics: generation time Tc, reproductive dispersion S (the distribution of ages of reproduction), and damping time τ (time to converge to stable (st)age distribution). We use data on 633 species of animals and plants, and perform phylogenetically corrected analyses. First we find that S varies allometrically and isometrically with Tc. As a result, τ varies allometrically with either Tc or S but not both. Second, we find a trade-off between τ and S, so that τ does not vary isometrically with Tc. This trade-off is a novel demographic component to the relationship between τ, Tc and S that is otherwise partly determined by their similarity as biological times. Our results indicate that species at the slow end of the slow-fast continuum take longer to converge to stable distribution than species with fast life-histories.

The lifetime reproductive success (LRS) of individuals is affected by random events such as death, realized growth, or realized reproduction, and the outcomes of these events can differ even when individuals have identical probabilities. Another source of randomness arises when these probabilities also change over time in variable environments. For structured populations in stochastic environments, we extend our recent method to determine how birth environment and birth stage determine the random distribution of the LRS. Our results provide a null model that quantifies effects on LRS of just the birth size or stage. Using Roe deer Capreolus capreolus as a case study, we show that the effect of an individual’s birth environment on LRS varies with the frequency of environments and their temporal autocorrelation, and that lifetime performance is affected by changes in the pattern of environmental states expected as a result of climate change.