Causality in the natural selection of the population ecological life histories of birds

By analysing the fitness consequences of trade-offs and constraints in the evolved species of today, traditional life history theory bypasses the important challenge of predicting the observed life history variation forward from cause and effects of natural selection.

A new preprint on bioRxiv fills the gap and reconciles 74% of the inter-specific variation in the population ecological life histories of 11,187 species of birds.

The study is based on the natural selection of mass, as it unfolds from the population dynamic feedback of density dependent interactive competition. This selects the inter-specific variation in the body masses, life histories, and ecological traits from variation in resource handling, mortality, and interactive competition (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 The decomposition of life history variation across, and within, 36 orders of birds. 90% intervals (black bars) and limits (dashed lines) of traits across orders, including the residual variation that is unexplained by resource handling (blue), residual adult mortality (yellow), residual juvenile survival (purple), residual metabolism (green), and residual interactive competition (red). For details see Witting (2024).

References

• Witting, L. 2024. Causality in the natural selection of the population ecological life histories of birds. Preprint in prep for bioRxiv .