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Reproductive dispersion and damping time scale with life-history speed
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  • Sha Jiang,
  • Harman Jaggi,
  • WENYUN ZUO,
  • Madan Oli,
  • Tim Coulson,
  • Jean-Michel Gaillard,
  • Shripad Tuljapurkar
Sha Jiang
Stanford University

Corresponding Author:jiangsha@stanford.edu

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Harman Jaggi
Stanford University
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WENYUN ZUO
Stanford University
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Madan Oli
University of Florida
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Tim Coulson
Oxford
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Jean-Michel Gaillard
UMR-CNRS 5558
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Shripad Tuljapurkar
Stanford University
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Abstract

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.
Sep 2022Published in Ecology Letters volume 25 issue 9 on pages 1999-2008. 10.1111/ele.14080