Adaptive strategies of coral reef invertebrates: coral reef environments that are regularly disturbed by storms and by predation often favor the very organisms most susceptible to damage by these processes

Jackson, Jeremy B.C.;Hughes, Terence P.

Abstract

[Extract]The life history of any organism is described by the sequence of developmental stages from birth to death, and by the schedule of associated vital processes, including growth, reproduction, and mortality. Since the resources required for these processes are never in infinite supply, and since environments are always variable, an organisms life history is, to some extent, a compromise. For example, if an animal concentrates on increasing its ability to survive by investing most of the energy at its disposal on building a sturdy, well-defended skeleton, then it cannot also invest maximally in fecundity by producing vast numbers of eggs. Resources must be budgeted to potentially competing processes. thus, an organism's schedule of life-history events can be thought of as the consequence of a pattern of investment - an investment "strategy" - that has been maintained over evolutionary time by natural selection.

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1545-2786

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Sigma XI, Scientific Research Society

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