ReviewEcology letters2009
Dynamic heterogeneity in life histories.
Review in Ecology letters, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 41 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed.
- Lucky To Be Alive, Luckier to Breed: Lifetime Reproduction in Weddell Seals.Ecology letters · 2026Article
- Coyotes Choose Cover Over Concrete When Selecting Den Sites.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- The Kinship Formula: Inferring the numbers of all kin from any structured population projection model.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Uncovering bighorn sheep life-history trajectories in multidimensional trait space.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Evolution, Complexity, and Life History Theory.Biological theory · 2025Article
- Reproductive tactics, birth timing and the risk-resource trade-off in an income breeder.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Article
- Hurricanes affect diversification among individual life courses of a primate population.The Journal of animal ecology · 2023Article
- When the going gets tough, the tough get going: Effect of extreme climate on an Antarctic seabird's life history.Ecology letters · 2022Article
- The Contributions of Maternal Age Heterogeneity to Variance in Lifetime Reproductive Output.The American naturalist · 2022Article
- Article
- Quantifying the effect of genetic, environmental and individual demographic stochastic variability for population dynamics in Plantago lanceolata.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The relative contribution of individual quality and changing climate as drivers of lifetime reproductive success in a short-lived avian species.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Hurricane-induced demographic changes in a non-human primate population.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- Variance as a life history outcome: Sensitivity analysis of the contributions of stochasticity and heterogeneity.Ecological modelling · 2020Article
- When carapace governs size: variation among age classes and individuals in a free-ranging ectotherm with delayed maturity.Oecologia · 2018Article
- From early life to senescence: individual heterogeneity in a long-lived seabird.Ecological monographs · 2018Article
- Incorporating variability in simulations of seasonally forced phenology using integral projection models.Ecology and evolution · 2018Article
- Interacting effects of unobserved heterogeneity and individual stochasticity in the life history of the southern fulmar.The Journal of animal ecology · 2018Article
- Drivers of Diversification in Individual Life Courses.The American naturalist · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Longitudinal data on natural populations have been analysed using multistage models in which survival depends on reproductive stage, and individuals change stages according to a Markov chain. These models are special cases of stage-structured population models. We show that stage-structured models generate dynamic heterogeneity: life-history differences produced by stochastic stratum dynamics. We characterize dynamic heterogeneity in a range of species across taxa by properties of the Markov chain: the entropy, which describes the extent of heterogeneity, and the subdominant eigenvalue, which describes the persistence of reproductive success during the life of an individual. Trajectories of reproductive stage determine survivorship, and we analyse the variance in lifespan within and between trajectories of reproductive stage. We show how stage-structured models can be used to predict realized distributions of lifetime reproductive success. Dynamic heterogeneity contrasts with fixed heterogeneity: unobserved differences that generate variation between life histories. We show by an example that observed distributions of lifetime reproductive success are often consistent with the claim that little or no fixed heterogeneity influences this trait. We propose that dynamic heterogeneity provides a 'neutral' model for assessing the possible role of unobserved 'quality' differences between individuals. We discuss fitness for dynamic life histories, and the implications of dynamic heterogeneity for the evolution of life histories and senescence.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.