How do diet and body mass drive reproductive strategies in mammals?
| dc.contributor.author | Famoso, Nicholas | |
| dc.contributor.author | Hopkins, Samantha S.B. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Davis, Edward Byrd | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-10-23T21:24:15Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-10-23T21:24:15Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2018-04-19 | |
| dc.description | 6 pages | |
| dc.description.abstract | Larger body size tends to lead to lower reproductive rates in mammals, but we do not understand how diet impacts this relationship. Reproductive strategies vary from K-selected (producing few offspring with extensive parental care) to r-selected (producing many offspring with little parental care). Here, we investigate how diet and body size impact the reproductive strategies of mammals within a phylogenetic framework using an index for reproductive strategy. For all diet categories we find larger mammals to be more K-selected. This relationship is significant for herbivores and omnivores, but not for carnivores, although the relationship for carnivores is comparable to that of herbivores and omnivores. The relationship is non-linear in carnivores and may be a consequence of differences between insect and vertebrate predators. Ultimately, the trend of more K-selected strategies with larger body size holds true for herbivores and omnivores, but different trajectories exist for carnivores depending on diet. | |
| dc.identifier.doi | https://doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/bly038 | |
| dc.identifier.orcid | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1795-624X | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/30132 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | Biological Journal of the Linnean Society | |
| dc.rights | Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0-US | |
| dc.subject | evolution | |
| dc.subject | life history | |
| dc.subject | mammals | |
| dc.title | How do diet and body mass drive reproductive strategies in mammals? | |
| dc.type | Article |